ICONOCLASTS 


BOOKS  BY  JAMES  HUNEKER 

PUBLISHED  BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Promenades   of  an  Impressionist.      12mo 
(Postage  15  cents) net,  $1.50 

Egoists:  A  Book  of  Supermen.    12mo,net,  $1.50 

Iconoclasts:  A  Book  of  Dramatists.    12mo, 

net,  $1.50 

Overtones:     A    Book    of     Temperaments. 
12mo net,  $1.50 

Mezzotints  in  Modern  Music.    12mo,    .        .$1.50 

Chopin:  The  Man  and  His  Music.     With 
Portrait.     12mo $2.00 

Visionaries.     12mo $1.50 

Melomaniacs.    12mo $1.50 


ICONOCLASTS 

A     BOOK     OF     DRAMATISTS 


IBSEN,    STRINDBERG,    BECQUE,    HAUPTMANN, 

SUDERMANN,    HERVIEU,    GORKY,    DUSE    AND 

D'ANNUNZIO,  MAETERLINCK  AND  BERNARD  SHAW 


BY 

JAMES    HUNEKEK 


My  truth  is  the  truth 

MAX  STIRNBH 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 
1910 


COPYRIGHT,  1905,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


PUBLISHED,  MARCH,  1905 


TO 
JOHN   FRANCIS   HUNEKER 


2036234 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.    HENRIK  IBSEN ,  i 

II.    AUGUST  STRINDBERG 139 

III.  HENRY  BECQUE 163 

IV.  GERHART  HAUPTMANN 182 

V.    PAUL  HERVIEU 211 

VI.    THE  QUINTESSENCE  OF  SHAW 233 

VII.    MAXIM  GORKY'S  NACHTASYL 269 

VIII.    HERMANN  SUDERMANN 286 

IX.    PRINCESS  MATHILDE'S  PLAY 304 

X.      DUSE  AND   D'ANNUNZIO 32° 

XI.      VlLLIERS   DE  L'lSLE  ADAM 35° 

XII.    MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 367 


vii 


I 

HENRIK   IBSEN 

I 

THE  INDIVIDUALIST 
The  Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you 

I 

FERDINAND  BRUNETIERE  has  declared  that 
"  there  can  be  no  tragedy  without  a  struggle ; 
nor  can  there  be  genuine  emotion  for  the  spec- 
tator unless  something  other  and  greater  than 
life  is  at  stake."  This  so  exactly  defines  the 
dramas  of  Henrik  Ibsen  that  it  might  have 
been  specifically  written  to  describe  their  dra- 
matic and  ethical  content.  Whatever  else 
Ibsen's  works  may  be,  they  are  first  soul  dra- 
mas ;  the  human  soul  is  not  only  their  shadowy 
protagonist,  but  it  is  the  stake  for  which  his 
characters  breathlessly  game  throughout  the 
vast  halls  of  his  poetic  and  historic  plays  and 
within  those  modern  middle-class  apartments, 
where  the  atmosphere  seems  rarefied  by  the 
intensity  of  the  struggle.  "  Greater  than  life  " 
means  for  Ibsen  the  immortal  soul  —  immortal 
not  in  the  theologic,  but  generic  sense ;  the  soul 
of  the  species,  which  never  had  a  beginning 
and  never  can  have  an  end.  With  this  precious 
i 


ICONOCLASTS 

entity  as  pawn  on  Ibsen's  dramatic  chess-board, 
the  Brunetiere  dictum  is  perfectly  fulfilled. 

Let  us  apply  to  him  and  his  plays  a  symbol ; 
let  us  symbolize  the  arch-symbolist.  Ibsen  is 
an  open  door.  The  door  enacts  an  important 
r61e  with  him.  Nora  Helmer,  in  A  Doll's 
House,  goes  out  of  the  door  to  her  new  life,  and 
in  The  Master  Builder,  Hilda  Wangel,  typifying 
the  younger  generation,  enters  to  Solness.  An 
open  door  on  the  chamber  of  the  spirit  is  Ibsen. 
Through  it  we  view  the  struggle  of  souls  in 
pain  and  doubt  and  wrath.  He  himself  has 
said  that  the  stage  should  be  considered  as  a 
room  with  the  fourth  wall  knocked  down  so 
that  the  spectators  could  see  what  is  going  on 
within  the  enclosure.  A  tragic  wall  is  this  miss- 
ing one,  for  between  the  listener  and  the  actor 
there  is  interposed  the  soul  of  the  playwright,  the 
soul  of  Ibsen,  which,  prism-like,  permits  us  to 
witness  the  refractions  of  his  art.  This  open 
door,  this  absent  barrier,  is  it  not  a  symbol  ? 

What  does  Henrik  Ibsen  mean  to  his  cen- 
tury ?  Is  he  dramatist,  symbolist,  idealist,  opti- 
mist, pessimist,  poet,  or  realist?  Or  is  he  a 
destructive,  a  corroding  force?  Has  he  con- 
structive gifts — aside  from  his  technical  genius? 
He  has  been  called  an  anarchic  preacher.  He 
has  been  described  as  a  debaser  of  the  moral 
coin.  He  has  been  ranged  far  from  the  angels, 
and  his  very  poetic  gifts  have  been  challenged. 
Yet  the  surface  pessimism  of  his  plays  conceals 
a  mighty  belief  in  the  ultimate  goodness  of 
2 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

mankind.  Realist  as  he  is,  his  dramas  are  shot 
through  with  a  highly  imaginative  symbolism. 
A  Pegasus  was  killed  early  under  him,  as  Georg 
Brandes  says ;  but  there  remains  a  rich  rem- 
nant of  poesy.  And  may  there  not  be  deduced 
from  his  complete  compositions  a  constructive 
philosophy  that -makes  for  the  ennoblement  of 
his  fellow-beings  ? 

Ibsen  is  a  reflective  poet,  one  to  whom  the 
idea  presents  itself  before  the  picture;  with 
Shakespeare  and  Goethe  the  idea  and  form 
were  simultaneously  born.  His  art  is  great  and 
varied,  yet  it  is  never  exercised  as  a  sheer  play 
of  form  or  colour  or  wit.  A  Romantic  originally, 
he  pays  the  tax  to  Beauty  by  his  vivid  symbol- 
ism and  his  rare  formal  perfections.  And  a 
Romantic  is  always  a  revolutionist.  Embittered 
in  youth  —  proud,  self-contained,  reticent  —  he 
waged  war  with  life  for  over  a  half-century; 
fought  for  his  artistic  ideals  as  did  Richard 
Wagner ;  and,  like  Wagner,  he  has  swept  the 
younger  generation  along  with  him.  He,  the 
greatest  moral  artist  of  his  century,  Tolstoy  not 
excepted,  was  reviled  for  what  he  had  not  said 
or  done  —  so  difficult  was  it  to  apprehend  his 
new,  elusive  method.  A  polemist  he  is,  as  were 
Byron  and  Shelley,  Tolstoy  and  Dickens,  Tur- 
genev  and  Dostoievsky.  Born  a  Northman,  he 
is  melancholic,  though  not  veritably  pessimistic 
of  temperament ;  moral  indignation  in  him  must 
not  be  confounded  with  the  pessimism  that  sees 
no  future  hope  for  mankind.  The  North  breeds 
3 


ICONOCLASTS 

mystics.  Shakespeare  would  have  made  his 
Hamlet  a  Scandinavian  even  if  the  legendary 
Hamlet  and  the  earlier  play  had  not  existed. 
The  brief,  white  nights,  the  chilly  climate,  the 
rugged,  awful  scenery,  react  on  sensitive  natures 
like  Ibsen's.  And  then  the  various  strains  in 
his  blood  should  not  be  forgotten,  —  Danish, 
German,  Norwegian,  and  Scotch.  Thus  we  get 
a  gamut  of  moods,  —  philosophic,  poetic,  mystic, 
and  analytic.  And  if  he  too  frequently  depicts 
pathologic  states,  is  it  not  the  fault  of  his  epoch  ? 
Few  dramatists  have  been  more  responsive  to 
their  century. 

II 

The  drama  is  the  domain  of  logic  and  will ; 
Henry  Becque  called  it  "the  art  of  sacrifices." 
The  Ibsen  technic  is  rather  tight  in  the  social 
dramas,  but  the  larger  rhythms  are  nowhere 
missing.  The  most  artificial  of  art  forms,  the 
drama,  is  in  his  hands  a  mirror  of  many  rever- 
berating lights.  The  transubstantiation  of  reali- 
ties is  so  smoothly  accomplished  that  one 
involuntarily  remembers  Whistler's  remark  as 
to  art  being  only  great  when  all  traces  of  the 
means  used  are  vanished.  Ibsen's  technic  is  a 
means  to  many  ends.  It  is  effortless  in  the 
later  plays  —  it  is  the  speech  of  emotion,  the 
portrayal  of  character.  "  Qui  dit  drame,  dit 
caractere,"  writes  Andre  Gide.  Ibsen's  content 
conditions  his  form.  His  art  is  the  result  of 
constraint.  He  respects  the  unities  of  time, 
4 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

place,  action,  not  that  he  admires  the  pseudo- 
classic  traditions  of  Boileau,  but  because  the 
rigorous  excision  of  the  superfluous  suits  his 
scheme.  Nor  is  he  an  extremist  in  this  question 
of  the  unities.  Like  Renan,  the  artist  in  him 
abhors  "the  horrible  mania  of  certitude."  The 
time-unit  in  his  best  plays  ranges  from  one  to 
two  days ;  the  locality  is  seldom  shifted  further 
than  from  room  to  garden.  As  he  matured  his 
theatrical  canvas  shrank,  the  number  of  his 
characters  diminished.  Even  the  action  became 
less  vivacious  and  various ;  the  exteriorization 
of  emotional  states  was  substituted  for  the 
bustling,  vigorous  life  of  the  earlier  plays.  Yet 

—  always  drama,  dynamic  not  static. 

His  dialogue  —  a  spoken,  never  a  literary  one 

—  varies  from  extreme  naturalism  to  the  half- 
uttered  sentences,  broken  phrases,  and  exclama- 
tions that  disclose  —  as  under  a  burning  light 

—  the  sorrow  and  pain  of  his  men  and  women. 
One  recalls  in  reading  the  later  pieces  the  say- 
ing of  Maurice  Barres,  "  For  an  accomplished 
spirit  there  is  but  one  dialogue  —  that  between 
our  two  egos  —  the  momentary  ego  that  we  are 
and   the   ideal   one   toward  which   we   strive." 
The    Ibsen    plays   are    character    symphonies. 
His  polyphonic  mastery  of  character  is  unique 
in  the  history  of   the  drama ;  for,  as  we  shall 
presently  show,  there  is  a  second  —  nay,  a  third 

—  intention  in  his  dialogue  that  give  forth  end- 
less repercussions  of  ideas  and  emotions. 

The  mental  intensity  of  Ibsen  is  relentless. 
5 


ICONOCLASTS 

Once,  Arthur  Symons  showing  Rodin  some 
Blake  drawings,  told  the  French  sculptor,  "  Blake 
used  literally  to  see  these  figures ;  they  are  not 
mere  inventions."  —  "Yes,"  replied  Rodin,  "he 
saw  them  once ;  he  should  have  seen  them 
three  or  four  times."  Ibsen's  art  presents  no 
such  wavering  vision.  He  saw  his  characters 
not  once  but  for  many  months  continuously 
before,  Paracelsus-like,  he  allowed  them  an 
escape  from  his  chemical  retort  to  the  footlights. 
Some  of  them  are  so  powerfully  realized  that 
their  souls  shine  like  living  torches. 

Ibsen's  symbolism  is  that  of  Baudelaire,  "  All 
nature  is  a  temple  filled  with  living  pillars,  and 
the  pillars  have  tongues  and  speak  in  confused 
words,  and  man  walks  as  through  a  forest  of 
countless  symbols."  The  dramatist  does  not 
merely  label  our  appetites  and  record  our  man- 
ners, but  he  breaks  down  the  barrier  of  flesh, 
shows  the  skeleton  that  upholds  it,  and  makes  a 
sign  by  which  we  recognize,  not  alone  the  poet 
in  the  dramatist,  but  also  the  god  within  us. 
The  "  crooked  sequence  of  life  "  has  its  speech 
wherewith  truth  may  be  imaged  as  beauty.  Ib- 
sen loves  truth  more  than  beauty,  though  he  does 
not  ignore  the  latter.  With  him  a  symbol  is  an 
image  and  not  an  abstraction.  It  is  not  the 
pure  idea,  barren  and  unadorned,  but  the  idea 
clothed  by  an  image  which  flashes  a  signal  upon 
our  consciousness.  Technically  we  know  that 
the  Norwegian  dramatist  employs  his  symbols 
as  a  means  of  illuminating  the  devious  acts  and 
6 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

speech  of  his  humans,  binding  by  repetitions 
the  disparate  sections  and  contrasted  motives  of 
his  play.  These  symbols  are  not  always  leading 
motives,  though  they  are  often  so  construed ; 
his  leit-motiven  are  to  be  sought  rather  in  the 
modulation  of  character  and  the  characteristic 
gestures  which  express  it.  With  Rosmersholm 
the  "  white  horses  "  indicate  by  an  image  the 
dark  forces  of  heredity  which  operate  in  the 
catastrophe.  The  gold  and  green  forest  in 
Little  Eyolf  is  a  symbol  of  what  Rita  Allmers 
brought  her  husband  Alfred,  and  the  resultant 
misery  of  a  marriage  to  which  the  man,  through 
a  mistaken  idealism,  had  sold  himself.  There 
are  such  symbols  and  catchwords  in  every  play. 
In  Emperor  and  Galilean  the  conquering  sun  is 
a  symbol  for  Julian  the  Apostate,  whose  destiny, 
he  believes,  is  conducted  by  the  joyous  sun;  while 
in  Ghosts  the  same  sun  is  for  the  agonized  Os- 
wald Alving  the  symbol  of  all  he  has  lost, — 
reason,  hope,  and  happiness.  Thus  the  tower 
in  The  Master  Builder,  the  open  door  in  A  Doll's 
House,  the  ocean  in  The  Lady  from  the  Sea,  give 
a  homogeneity  which  the  otherwise  loose  struc- 
ture of  the  drama  demands.  The  Ibsen  play 
is  always  an  organic  whole. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  Henrik  Ibsen, 
who  was  born  in  1828,  —  surely  under  the  sign 
of  Saturn !  —  had  passed  through  the  flaming 
revolutionary  epoch  of  1848,  when  the  lyric  pes- 
simism of  his  youthful  poems  was  transformed 
into  bitter  denunciations  of  authority.  He  was 
7 


ICONOCLASTS 

regarded  as  a  dangerous  man  ;  and  while  he  may 
not  have  indulged  in  any  marked  act  of  rebel- 
lion, his  tendencies  were  anarchic  —  a  relic  of 
his  devotion  to  the  French  Revolution.  But 
then  he  was  a  transcendentalist  and  an  intellec- 
tual anarch.  If  he  called  the  State  the  enemy 
of  the  individual,  it  was  because  he  foresaw  the 
day  when  the  State  might  absorb  the  man.  He 
advocated  a  bloodless  revolution ;  it  must  be 
spiritual  to  compass  victory.  Unless  men  willed 
themselves  free,  there  could  be  no  real  freedom. 
"In  those  days  there  was  no  King  in  Israel; 
every  man  did  that  which  was  right  in  his  own 
eyes."  Ibsen  confessed  that  the  becoming  was 
better  than  the  being  —  a  touch  of  Renan  and 
his  beloved  fieri.  He  would  have  agreed  with 
Emerson,  who  indignantly  exclaimed,  "  Is  it 
not  the  chief  disgrace  in  the  world  not  to  be  a 
unit ;  not  to  be  reckoned  one  character ;  not  to 
yield  that  peculiar  fruit  which  each  man  was 
created  to  bear,  but  to  be  reckoned  in  the  gross, 
in  the  hundred  of  thousand,  of  the  party,  the 
section  to  which  we  belong,  and  our  opinion 
predicted  geographically  as  the  North  or  the 
South  ? "  Lord  Acton's  definition  that  "  Liberty 
is  not  a  means  to  a  higher  political  end.  It  is 
in  itself  the  highest  political  end,"  would  have 
pleased  Ibsen.  "  The  minority  is  always  in  the 
right,"  he  asserts. 

The  Ibsen  plays  are  a  long  litany  praising  the 
man  who  wills.     The  weak  man  must  be  edu- 
cated.    Be  stron'g,  not  as  the  "blond  roaming 
8 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

beast"  of  Nietzsche,  but  as  captain  of  your  own 
soul's  citadel !  Remy  de  Gourmont  sees  the  idea 
of  liberty  as  an  emphatic  deformation  of  the 
idea  of  privilege.  Good  is  an  accident  produced 
by  man  at  the  price  of  terrible  labour.  Nature 
has  no  mercy.  Is  there  really  free  will  ?  Is  it 
not  one  of  the  most  seductive  forms  of  the  uni- 
versal fiction  ?  True,  answers  in  effect  Ibsen  ; 
heredity  controls  our  temperaments,  the  dead 
rule  our  actions,  yet  let  us  act  as  if  we  are  truly 
free.  Adjuring  Brand  "To  thyself  be  true," 
while  Peer  Gynt  practices  "  To  thyself  be  suffi- 
cient," Ibsen  proves  in  the  case  of  the  latter 
that  Will,  if  it  frees,  also  kills.  Life  is  no  longer 
an  affair  of  the  tent  and  tribe.  The  crook  of  a 
man's  finger  may  upset  a  host,  so  interrelated 
is  the  millet-seed  with  the  star.  A  poet  of  affir- 
mations, he  preaches  in  his  thunder-harsh  voice 
as  did  Comte,  "  Submission  is  the  base  of  per- 
fection "  ;  but  this  submission  must  be  voluntary. 
The  universal  solvent  is  Will.  Work  is  not  the 
only  panacea.  Philosophically,  Ibsen  stands  here 
between  Schopenhauer  and  Nietzsche ;  he  has 
belief  in  the  Will,  though  not  the  Frankfort 
philosopher's  pessimism ;  and  the  Will  to  Power 
of  Nietzsche  without  that  rhapsodist's  lyric  ec- 
stasy. Nietzsche  asked:  "  For  what  is  freedom  ? 
To  have  the  will  to  be  responsible  for  one's  self." 
Ibsen  demonstrates  that  a  great  drama  must 
always  have  a  great  philosophic  substratum. 
There  may  be  no  design  in  nature  —  let  us  be- 
lieve there  is.  Gesture  is  the  arrest  of  the  flux, 
9 


ICONOCLASTS 

rendering  visible  the  phenomena  of  life,  for  it 
moderates  its  velocity.  In  this  hypothesis  he 
would  not  be  at  variance  with  De  Gourmont,  who 
has  not  hesitated  to  ask  whether  intelligence 
itself  is  not  an  accident  in  the  creative  processes, 
and  if  it  really  be  the  goal  toward  which  man- 
kind finally  believes  itself  drifting. 

There  is  the  mystic  as  well  as  the  realistic 
chord  in  the  Ibsen  drama.  His  Third  Kingdom, 
not  of  the  flesh  (Pagan)  nor  of  the  spirit  (Chris- 
tian), yet  partaking  of  both,  has  a  ring  of  Hegel 
and  also  of  that  abbot  of  Flores  called  Joachim, 
who  was  a  mediaeval  Franciscan.  The  grandilo- 
quent silhouettes  of  the  Romantic  drama,  the 
mouthers  of  rhetoric,  the  substitution  of  a  bric- 
a-brac  mirage  for  reality,  have  no  place  in 
Ibsen's  art.  For  this  avoidance  of  the  banal 
he  has  been  called  a  perverter  of  the  heroic. 
His  characters  are  in  reality  the  bankruptcy  of 
stale  heroisms;  he  replaces  the  old  formula 
with  a  new,  vital  one  —  Truth  at  all  hazards 
He  discerns  a  Fourth  Dimension  of  the  spirit. 
He  has  said  that  if  mankind  had  time  to  think, 
there  would  be  a  new  world.  This  opposer  of 
current  political  and  moral  values  declares  that 
reality  is  itself  a  creation  of  art  —  each  indi- 
vidual creates  his  picture  of  the  world.  An 
idealist  he  is  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word, 
though  some  critics,  after  reading  into  the  plays 
Socialism  —  picture  Ibsen  and  "  regimentation," 
as  Huxley  dubbed  it !  —  claim  the  sturdy  individ- 
ualist as  a  mere  unmasker  of  conventionalism. 
10 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

How  far  all  this  is  from  Ibsen's  intention  — 
who  is  much  more  than  a  satirist !  and  social 
reformer  —  may  be  seen  in  his  Brand,  with  its 
austere  watchword,  "  All  or  Nothing."  A 
prophet  and  a  seer  he  is,  not  a  glib  socialist 
exposing  municipal  evils  and  offering  ready-made 
prophylactics.  The  curve  of  Ibsen's  art  com- 
prises all  these  petty  minor  evils  of  life,  it  reaches 
across  the  edge  of  the  human  soul ;  while,  ardent 
pilgrim  that  he  is,  he  slowly  mounts  to  the  peaks 
from  which  he  may  see  his  Third  Kingdom. 
But,  like  a  second  Moses,  he  has  never  de- 
scended into  that  country  of  ineffable  visions 
or  trod  its  broad  and  purifying  landscapes. 

Max  Stirner's  radical  and  defiant  egoism, 
expressed  in  his  pithy  axiom,  "  My  truth  is  the 
truth,"  might  be  answered  by  Ibsen  with  the 
contradictory  "  Le  moi  est  hai'ssable  "  of  Pascal. 
Indeed,  an  ironic  self-contradiction  may  be 
gleaned  from  a  study  of  Ibsen ;  each  play  seems 
to  deny  the  conclusions  of  the  previous  one. 
But  when  the  entire  field  is  surveyed  in  retro- 
spect the  smaller  irregularities  and  deflections 
from  the  level  melt  into  a  harmonious  picture. 
Ibsen  is  complex.  Ibsen  is  confusing.  In 
Ibsen  there  rage  the  thinker,  the  artist,  the 
critic.  These  sometimes  fail  to  amalgamate, 
and  so  the  artistic  precipitation  is  cloudy.  He 
is  a  true  Viking  who  always  loves  stormy 
weather  ;  and,  as  Brandes  said,  "  God  is  in  his 
heart,  but  the  devil  is  in  his  body."  His  is 
an  emotional  logic,  if  one  may  frame  such  an 
II 


ICONOCLASTS 

expression ;  and  it  would  be  in  vain  to  search  in 
his  works  for  the  ataraxia  of  the  tranquil  Greek 
philosopher.  A  dynamic  grumbler,  like  Car- 
lyle,  he  eventually  contrives  to  orient  himself ; 
his  dramas  are  only  an  escape  from  the  ugly 
labyrinth  of  existence.  If  his  characters  are 
sick,  so  is  latter-day  life.  The  thinker  often 
overrides  the  poet  in  him;  and  at  times  the 
dramatist,  the  pure  Tkeatermensck,  gets  the  bit 
between  his  teeth  and  nearly  wrecks  the  psy- 
chologist. He  acknowledges  the  existence  of 
evil  in  the  world,  knows  the  house  of  evil,  but 
has  not  tarried  in  it.  Good  must  prevail  in  the 
end  is  the  burden  of  his  message,  else  he  would 
not  urge  upon  his  fellow-beings  the  necessity  of 
willing  and  doing. 

The  cold  glamour  of  his  moods  is  supple- 
mented by  the  strong,  sincere  purpose  underly- 
ing them.  He  feels,  with  Kierkegaard,  that  the 
average  sensual  man  will  ever  "parry  the  ethi- 
cal claim  "  ;  and  if,  in  Flaubert's  eyes,  "  man  is 
bad  because  he  is  stupid,"  in  Ibsen's  "  he  is 
stupid  because  he  is  bad."  "To  will  is  to  have 
to  will,"  says  his  Maximus  in  Emperor  and 
Galilean.  This  phrase  is  the  capstone  of  the 
Ibsen  structure.  If  he  abhors  the  inflated 
phraseology  of  altruism,  he  is  one  with  Herbert 
Spencer,  who  spoke  of  a  relapse  into  egotism 
as  the  only  thing  which  could  make  altruism 
enduring. 

Felicity,  then,  with  Ibsen  is  experience  itself, 
not  the  result  of  experience.  Life  is  a  huge 

12 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

misunderstanding,  and  the  Ibsen  dramas  hinge 
on  misunderstandings  —  the  conflict  between  the 
instinctive  and  the  acquired,  between  the  forces 
of  heredity  and  of  environment.  Herein  lies  his 
preference  for  the  drama  of  disordered  wills. 
And  touching  on  this  accusation  of  morbidity 
and  sickness,  may  there  not  be  gleaned  from 
Shakespeare  and  Goethe  many  mad,  half-mad, 
and  brain-sick  men  and  women  ?  The  English 
poet's  plays  are  a  perfect  storehouse  of  examples 
for  the  alienist.  Hallucination  that  hardens  into 
mania  is  delicately  recorded  by  Ibsen ;  he  notes 
with  a  surgeon's  skilled  eye  the  first  slight  de- 
cadence and  the  final  entombment  of  the  will. 
Furthermore,  the  chiefest  malady  of  our  age  is 
that  of  the  will  enfeebled  by  lack  of  exercise,  by 
inanition  due  to  unsound  education ;  and  as  he 
fingers  our  spiritual  muscles  he  cries  aloud  their 
flabbiness.  In  men  the  pathologic  symptoms 
are  more  marked  than  in  women;  hence  the 
number  of  women  in  his  dramas  who  assume 
dominant  roles  —  not  that  Ibsen  has  any  par- 
ticular sympathy  with  the  New  Woman,  but  be- 
cause he  has  seen  that  the  modern  woman  marks 
time  better  with  the  Zeitgeist  than  her  male  com- 
plement. 

Will,  even  though  your  will  be  disastrous  in  its 
outcome,  but  will,  he  insists ;  and  yet  demonstrates 
that  only  through  self-surrender  can  come  com- 
plete self-realization.  To  say  "  I  am  what  I  am," 
is  the  Ibsen  credo  ;  but  this  "  7"  must  be  tested 
in  the  fire  of  self-abnegation.  To  the  average 
13 


ICONOCLASTS 

theologian  all  this  rings  suspiciously  like  the  old- 
fashioned  doctrine  of  salvation  by  good  works. 
The  Scotch  leaven  is  strong  in  Ibsen.  In  his 
bones  he  is  a  moralist,  in  practice  an  artist.  His 
power  is  that  of  the  artist  doubled  by  the  pro- 
found moralist,  the  philosopher  doubled  by  the 
dramatist;  the  crystallization  in  the  plays  of 
these  antagonistic  qualities  constitutes  the  tri' 
umph  of  his  genius. 


Ill 

The  stage  is  Ibsen's  pulpit,  but  he  is  first  the 
artist ;  his  moral,  as  in  all  great  drama,  is  im- 
plicit. He  is  a  doubter ;  he  often  answers  a 
question  with  another  question;  and  if  he  builds 
high  he  also  digs  deep.  His  plays  may  be 
broadly  divided  into  three  phases.  First  we  get 
the  national-romantic ;  second,  the  historical ; 
third,  the  social  dramas  of  revolt.  In  the  first, 
under  the  influence  of  fable  and  folk-song,  Ibsen 
delved  into  the  roots  of  Scandinavia's  past ;  then 
follow  the  stirring  dramas,  Fru  Inger  of  Ostraat, 
The  Vikings  at  Helgeland,  The  Pretenders,  and 
those  two  widely  contrasted  epics,  Brand  and 
Peer  Gynt.  Beginning  with  The  Young  Men's 
League  and  ending  with  the  dramatic  epilogue, 
When  We  Dead  Awake,  the  third  period  is  cov- 
ered. And  what  range,  versatility,  observation, 
poetic  imagination,  intellectual  power !  Yet 
this  dramatist  has  been  called  provincial !  Pro- 
vincial —  when  his  maiden  tragedy,  Catilina, 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

begins  B.C.  and  his  epilogue  ends  the  nineteenth 
century ;  when  his  characters  are  types  as  well 
as  individuals  that  exist  from  South  to  North. 
True  man  of  the  North,  he  sought  in  Italy  for 
his  scene  of  action,  his  first  hero.  That  his  men 
and  women  are  strongly  Norwegian  is  no  impu- 
tation of  provincialism  —  Christiania  is  a  world 
capital,  Scandinavia  is  not  a  Bceotia.  And  is 
not  human  nature  composed  of  the  same  soul- 
stuff  the  world  over  ?  A  similar  accusation 
might  be  easily  brought  against  French,  Eng- 
lish, and  German  drama.  Not  for  the  sake  of 
the  phrase  did  M.  Faguet  salute  Ibsen  as  "  the 
greatest  psychological  dramatist  since  the  time 
of  Racine."  And  remember  that  Faguet  is  a 
Frenchman  loyal  to  the  art  traditions  of  his  race, 
—  logic,  order,  clarity  of  motive,  and  avoidance 
of  cloudy  dramatic  symbolism. 

There  are  at  least  three  factors  to  be  noted  in 
the  Ibsen  plays  —  the  play  quA  play,  that  is,  the 
drama  for  the  sake  of  its  surface  intrigue,  with 
its  painting  of  manner  and  character ;  the  more 
ulterior  meanings  and  symbolism ;  and  lastly, 
the  ideologic  factor,  really  the  determining  one. 
M.  Jules  Gaultier,  a  young  French  thinker,  has 
evolved  from  the  novels  of  Gustave  Flaubert  — 
greatest  master  of  philosophic  fiction  —  a  meta- 
physic  which  is  very  engaging.  Bovaryisme  he 
denominates  the  tendency  in  humanity  to  appear 
other  than  it  is.  This  trait  has  been  dealt  with 
by  all  world  novelists  and  satirists ;  Bovaryisme 
has  elevated  it  to  the  dignity  of  a  Universal 
IS 


ICONOCLASTS 

Fiction.  We  pretend  to  be  that  which  we  are 
not.  It  is  the  law  of  being,  the  one  mode  by 
which  life  is  enabled  to  vary  and  escape  the 
typic  monotony  of  the  species.  It  is  the  self- 
dupery  of  the  race.  We  are  all  snobs  of  the 
Infinite,  parvenus  of  the  Eternal.  We  are 
doomed  to  dissemble,  else  perish  as  a  race. 

Now,  apply  the  laws  of  biology  to  the  moral 
world  and  you  have  the  perfect  flowering  of  the 
application  in  the  Ibsen  drama.  The  basic  clash 
of  character  is  that  between  species  and  individ- 
ual. Each  drama  furnishes  an  illustration.  In 
Rosmersholm  we  see  Johann  Rosmer  —  the  last 
of  the  Rosmers,  himself  personifying  the  law  of 
heredity  —  endeavouring  to  escape  this  iron  law 
and  perishing  in  the  attempt.  He  drags  down 
with  him  Rebekka  West,  who  because  of  her 
tendency  to  variability,  in  an  evolutionary  sense, 
might  have  developed;  but  the  Rosmer  ideals 
poisoned  her  fresher  nature.  Halvard  Solness, 
the  Master  Builder,  suffers  from  his  tyrannical 
conscience — nearly  all  of  Ibsen's  characters 
have  a  morbid  conscience — and  not  even  the 
spiritual  lift  of  that  exotic  creature,  Hilda  Wan- 
gel,  can  save  him  from  his  fate.  He  attempts 
to  go  beyond  the  law  and  limits  of  his  being, 
and  his  will  fails.  But  is  it  not  better  to  fall 
from  his  giddy  height  than  remain  a  builder  of 
happy  homes  and  churches  ?  From  her  birth 
neurotic  Hedda  Gabler  is  hopelessly  flawed  in 
her  moral  nature.  She  succumbs  to  the  first 
pressure  of  adverse  circumstance.  She,  too,  is 
16 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

not  ripe  for  spiritual  re-birth.  Nora  Helmer, 
like  Hilda  Wangel,  like  Mrs.  Alving,  frees  her- 
self by  her  variation  from  what  we,  in  our 
ignorance  of  our  own  possibilities,  call  the 
normal.  It  is  a  cardinal  doctrine  of  Ibsen  that 
we  alone  can  free  ourselves ;  help  can  never 
come  from  without.  This  he  demonstrates  by 
his  ironical  flaying  of  the  busybody  reformer 
and  idealist,  Greger  Werle,  in  The  Wild  Duck. 
Ibsen  also  presents  here  the  reverse  of  the  Ibsen 
medal.  Ekdal,  the  photographer,  who  is  utterly 
worthless,  a  fantastic  liar  and  masquerader,  like 
Peer  Gynt,  is  not  saved  by  the  interference  of 
Werle  —  quite  the  contrary ;  tragedy  is  sum- 
moned through  this  same  Werle's  intrusion,  and 
that  most  pathetic  figure,  Hedwig  Ekdal,  might 
have  striven  to  self-realization  had  not  her 
young  existence  been  snuffed  out  by  a  virtuous 
lie.  Hilda  Wangel  is  the  incarnation  of  the 
new  order,  Rosmersholm  of  the  old.  And,  les 
femmes,  ces  $tres  mediocres  et  magiques,  as  Jules 
Laforgue  calls  them,  the  women  of  Ibsen  usually 
manage  to  evade  the  consequences  of  the  life-lie 
better  than  the  men.  The  secret  is  that,  nearer 
nature,  they  instinctively  will  to  live  with  more 
intensity  of  purpose.  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  thinks 
that  the  conflict  between  Free  Will  and  Deter- 
minism is  because  we  "  ignore  the  fact  that  there 
must  be  a  subjective  partition  in  the  universe 
separating  the  region  of  which  we  have  some 
inkling  of  knowledge  from  the  region  of  which 
we  have  none."  It  must  be  that  reservoir  of 


ICONOCLASTS 

eternal  certitudes  for  which  Maurice  Maeterlinck 
sighs.  The  unknown,  the  subliminal  forces  la- 
bas,  have  their  share  in  the  control  of  our  will, 
though  we  may  only  judge  of  what  we  see  on 
this  side  of  the  "  misty  region  "  of  metaphysic. 
Be  this  as  it  may,  Ibsen  is  content  to  set  his 
puppets  acting  within  the  appreciable  limits  of 
free  will  allowed  us  by  our  cognition. 

If  this  evolutionary  foundation  of  the  Ibsen 
drama  be  too  deep,  there  is  also  the  dialogue, 
externally  simple,  terse,  natural,  forcible,  and 
in  the  vernacular  replete  with  sonority,  colour, 
and  rhythm.  Yet  it  is  a  stumbling-block ;  be- 
neath the  dramatist's  sentences  are  pools  of 
uncertainty.  This  is  the  so-called  "  interior  "  or 
"  secondary  "  dialogue.  The  plays,  read  in  the 
illuminating  sense  of  their  symbolism,  become 
other  and  more  perplexing  engines  of  power. 
They  are  spiritual  palimpsests,  through  which 
may  be  dimly  deciphered  the  hieroglyphics  of 
another  soul-continent.  We  peer  into  them  like 
crystal-gazers  and  see  the  faint  outlines  of  our- 
selves, but  so  seemingly  distorted  as  to  evoke  a 
shudder.  Or  is  our  ill-suppressed  horror  in  the 
presence  of  these  haunting  shapes  of  humanity 
the  result  of  ignorance  ?  The  unknown  is  always 
disquieting.  Hippolyte  Taine  may  be  right. 
"  Our  inborn  human  imperfection  is  part  of  the 
order  of  things,  like  the  constant  deformation 
of  the  petal  in  a  plant."  And  perhaps  to  Ibsen, 
who  is  ever  the  dramatist,  the  lover  of  dramatic 
effects,  should  be  granted  the  license  of  the 
18 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

character  painter.  To  heighten  the  facts  of  life 
is  a  prime  office  of  the  playwright. 

But  he  has  widened  by  his  synthesis  the  do- 
main of  the  theatre ;  he  has  brought  to  it  new 
material  for  assimilation  ;  he,  in  a  technical  sense, 
has  accomplished  miracles  by  transposing  hope- 
lessly undramatic  ideas  to  the  boards,  and  by 
his  indomitable  tenacity  has  transmuted  them 
into  viable  dramatic  events  and  characters. 
Every  piece  of  Ibsen  can  be  played ;  even  Peer 
Gynt  and  its  forty  scenic  changes.  It  has  been 
played  —  with  its  epic  fantasy,  humour,  irony, 
tenderness,  and  philosophy ;  Peer  Gynt,  the  very 
picture  of  the  modern  inconstant  man,  his  spirit- 
ual fount  arid,  his  imagination  riotous,  his  con- 
science nil,  rank  his  ideals,  his  dodging  along 
the  line  of  least  moral  resistance,  his  compro- 
mising with  every  reality  of  life  —  this  Peer 
Gynt  is  the  very  symbol  of  our  shallow,  callous, 
and  material  civilization. 

In  all  the  conflicting  undertow  of  his  temper- 
ament and  intellect,  Ibsen  has  maintained  his 
equilibrium.  He  is  his  own  Brand,  a  heaven- 
stormer;  his  own  Skule,  the  kingly  self-mis- 
truster,  and  his  own  Solness,  the  doubter  of 
himself  cowed  by  the  thoughts  of  the  new  gen- 
eration —  personified  in  August  Strindberg  and 
Gerhart  Hauptmann.  The  old  and  the  new 
meet  at  a  tumultuous  apex  of  art  at  once  grim, 
repellent,  morose,  emotional,  unsocial,  masterful, 
and  gripping.  And  what  an  art !  What  an  ant- 
hill of  struggling,  impotent  humanity  he  has 
19 


ICONOCLASTS 

exposed  !  What  riches  for  the  comedians  — 
those  ever  admirable  exponents  of  Bovaryisme  / 
They  pass  us  slowly  by,  this  array  of  Ibsen  men 
and  women,  with  anguish  in  their  eyes,  their 
features  convulsed  and  tortured  into  revealing 
their  most  secret  shames  by  their  cruel  master. 
They  pass  us  slowly,  this  motley  mob,  with  hyp- 
notic beckoning  gestures  and  piteous  pleading 
glances,  for  their  souls  will  be  presently  spilled 
by  their  implacable  creator.  Lady  Inger,  her 
son  dead,  her  daughter  distraught ;  revengeful 
Hjordis  and  bewitched  Sigurd;  Duke  Skule, 
fearing  Hakon's  divine  right  to  the  throne ; 
Svanhilda  freeing  Falk  as  she  goes  to  her 
martyr  marriage  with  the  unloved  Gulsted ; 
Brand,  a  new  Adam,  sacrificing  wife  and  child 
to  his  fetich,  "  All  or  Nothing  "  ;  fascinating,  in- 
constant Peer  Gynt ;  Emperor  Julian,  that  mag- 
nificent failure  ;  the  grotesque  Steensgard ;  the 
whited  sepulchre,  Consul  Bernick;  Nora  and 
her  self-satisfied  Helmer;  Oswald  Alving  and 
his  agonized  mother;  the  doughty  Stockmann, 
who  declares  that  the  exceptional  man  stands 
ever  alone ;  Gina,  the  homely  sensible,  and 
Ekdal,  the  self -illusionist ;  Rebekka  West  and 
Johann  Rosmer ;  Ellida  Wangel  and  the  Stranger ; 
Hedda  and  Loevborg ;  Hilda  and  Solness ;  Asta 
and  Rita  Allmers ;  John  Gabriel  Borkman,  his 
gloomy  brows  furrowed  by  thoughts  of  ven- 
geance, accused  by  Ella  Rentheim,  whose  soul 
he  has  let  slip  from  his  keeping;  Rubek  and 
Irene,  the  tragedy  of  the  artist  who  sacrifices 
20 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

love  for  art ;  and  the  entire  cohort  of  subsidiary 
characters,  each  one  personal  and  alive  —  is  not 
this  small  world,  this  pictured  life,  a  most  elo- 
quent witness  to  the  fecundity  of  the  northern 
Rembrandt !  He  proclaims  that  "  The  Kingdom 
of  God  is  within  you";  Tolstoy  has  preached 
the  like.  But  between  the  depressing  quietism 
of  the  Russian  and  the  crescent  individualism 
of  the  Norwegian  there  lies  the  gulf  separating 
East  and  West.  Tolstoy  faces  the  past.  Ibsen 
confronts  the  future. 

II 

YOUTHFUL  PLAYS  AND   POEMS 

Students  of  Ibsen  are  deeply  indebted  to  Mr. 
William  Archer,  not  alone  for  his  translations 
—  colourless  though  they  often  are  —  but  also 
for  his  illuminative  critical  articles  on  the  Nor- 
wegian master.  A  comparatively  recent  one 
describes  Ibsen's  apprenticeship  and  destroys 
the  notion  that  he  owed  anything  to  George 
Sand.  He  learned  much  of  his  stagecraft  from 
Eugene  Scribe,  who  was  the  artistic  parent  of 
Sardou.  But  as  Mr.  Archer  wrote  in  an  Eng- 
lish periodical :  — 

If  the  French  are  determined  to  claim  some  share 
in  the  making  of  Ibsen,  they  must  shift  their  ground 
a  little.  He  did  not  get  his  ideas  from  George 
Sand,  but  he  got  a  good  deal  of  his  stagecraft  from 
Eugene  Scribe  and  the  playwrights  of  his  school. 
21 


ICONOCLASTS 

Ideas  he  could  not  possibly  get  from  Scribe,  for  the 
best  of  all  reasons ;  but  he  can  be  proved  to  have 
been  familiar,  at  the  outset  of  his  career,  with  the 
works  of  that  great  inventor  and  manipulator  of  sit- 
uations, from  whom  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
he  acquired  the  rudiments  of  dramatic  construction. 
He  ultimately  outgrew  his  teacher,  even  in  technical 
skill,  and  his  later  plays,  from  Ghosts  onward,  show 
the  influence  of  Scribe  mainly  in  the  careful  avoid- 
ance of  his  methods.  Nevertheless  it  was  in  the 
Scribe  gymnasium,  so  to  speak,  that  he  trained  him- 
self for  his  subsequent  feats  as  a  technician. 

It  is  significant  of  Ibsen's  frame  of  mind  in 
his  extreme  youth,  that  his  first  drama  was 
called  Catilina  (1850)  and  devoted  to  the  Ro- 
man champion  of  individual  rights,  the  hater  of 
tyrants.  He  studied,  says  his  biographer  Hans 
Jaeger,  Sallust's  Catiline  and  Cicero's  Orations 
against  Catiline ;  and  Vasenius  is  quoted  to  the 
effect  that  the  Catilina  of  Ibsen  is  "  a  true  rep- 
resentation of  the  historic  personage"  —  an 
opinion  in  which  Jaeger  does  not  coincide. 
Two  women,  Aurelia  and  Furia,  who  dispute 
for  the  possession  of  the  hero,  are  the  two 
women  natures  that  may  be  found  in  nearly 
all  of  the  dramas.  It  is  not  the  purpose  of  this 
study  to  dwell  long  upon  the  plays  not  in  the 
regular  repertory.  Chiefly  for  the  historic  ret- 
rospect are  they  mentioned  ;  particularly  in  the 
case  of  Catilina,  the  first  as  it  sounds  the  key 
in  which  the  master  works  of  the  poet  are 
generally  sounded,  the  key  of  individuality, 

22 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

"  the  utmost  clearness  of  vision  and  fulness 
of  power,"  to  employ  Ibsen's  own  words. 

Twenty-six  poems  appeared  in  a  slim  volume. 
They  are  boyish,  one  dating  from  the  nine- 
teenth year  of  the  author.  They  are  immature, 
as  might  be  expected,  though  charged  with  pes- 
simism, a  youthful  Byronism.  "  He  went  about 
Grimstad  like  an  enigma  secured  with  seven 
seals,"  said  a  lady  who  knew  him  then. 

The  Warriors'  Tomb ;  Norma,  or  a  Politi- 
cian's Love,  —  this  latter  a  musical  tragedy  ;  St. 
John's  Night,  need  not  occupy  our  time,  for  the 
curious  Jaeger  and  Georg  Brandes  tell  all  there 
is  to  be  told.  St.  John's  Night,  though  unpub- 
lished, was  produced  at  the  Bergen  Theatre, 
January  2,  1853. 

The  writer  confesses  to  deep  admiration  for 
Fru  Inger  of  Ostraat  (1857)  and  The  Pre- 
tenders (1864),  both  translated  by  Mr.  Archer. 
Dealing  as  they  do  with  historical  figures  they 
must  be  of  necessity  interesting  to  Norwegians. 
Considered  purely  as  stage  plays  they  appeal, 
particularly  Lady  Inger,  a  Lady  Macbeth  in 
her  power  for  evil.  Nils  Lykke,  too,  is  firmly 
drawn  and  is  fascinating  in  his  ambitions  and 
debaucheries.  There  is  one  big  scene  in  which 
the  pair  meet,  which  does  not  soon  leave  the 
memory.  We  seem  to  see  in  The  Pretenders 
"  the  Great  King's  thoughts  "  of  Skule,  the  germ 
of  Julian's  character,  so  magnificently  exposed 
in  Emperor  and  Galilean.  The  Pretenders  is 
full  of  barbaric  colour  and  the  shock  of  arms. 
23 


ICONOCLASTS 

Some  episodes  recall  in  atmosphere  those  won. 
derful  scenes  in  Wagner's  Gotterdammerung 
with  their  hoarse-throated  and  bloody-minded 
thanes. 

I  was  lucky  enough  to  be  present  at  the 
revival  of  this  epical  composition  at  Berlin  in 
the  Neues  Theatre,  October,  1904.  Previous  to 
this  the  Meiningen  organization  had  presented 
the  piece  in  a  worthy  manner,  and  once  at 
the  Schiller  Theatre  there  had  been  a  few 
representations.  I  was  amazed  at  the  power 
and  verisimilitude  of  Ibsen's  characters  up  to 
the  death  scene  —  rather  a  theatrical  one  —  of 
the  wicked  Bishop  Nikolas.  After  that  the 
action  became,  because  of  the  weak  inter- 
pretation of  Duke  Skule  by  Franz  Wullner, 
uninteresting.  And  then,  too,  the  fatiguing 
lengths;  nearly  five  hours  were  consumed  in 
this  noteworthy  performance.  Director  Max 
Reinhardt  was  a  subtly  wicked  ecclesiastic, 
Friedrich  Kanzler  the  heroic  King  Hakon. 
Die  Kronpratendenten,  like  Wagner's  Ring, 
should  be  given  in  sections.  At  the  Neues 
Theatre  it  was  splendidly  mounted,  though  it  is 
doubtful  if  it  ever  will  be  a  popular  drama  in 
Germany. 

The  Feast  at  Solhaug  (1857)  was  a  success 
when  it  was  played  at  Bergen.  Jaeger  says 
that  Olaf  Lijekrans,  his  next  but  unprinted 
drama,  is  more  romantic  than  its  predecessor. 
St.  John's  Night  is  redolent  of  folk-song,  and 
the  lyric  prevails  in  nearly  all  the  earlier  work  ; 
24 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

but  prose  dominates  in  the  three  historical 
dramas,  the  third  being  The  Vikings  at  Hel- 
geland,  considered  elsewhere. 

When  Henrik  Ibsen  celebrated  his  seventieth 
birthday,  the  Berlin  Press  Society,  as  an  intro- 
duction to  the  celebration,  had  an  Ibsen  premiere, 
at  which  his  early  drama,  The  Warriors'  Tomb, 
was  recited.  This  piece  exhibits  him  not  as 
the  psychological  but  as  the  romantic  poet, 
in  his  twenty-second  year.  He  wrote  the  work 
in  1850  while  he  was  a  poor  student  in  Chris- 
tiania.  It  was  written  immediately  after  Cati 
lina,  and  was  performed  on  the  stage  at 
Christiania  on  September  26  of  the  same  year. 
When  Ibsen  became  stage  manager  of  the 
Bergen  Theatre  a  revised  version  of  the  play 
was  given,  January  2,  1854.  A  local  newspaper 
printed  it  as  a  feuilleton,  but  every  copy  of  that 
paper  has  vanished,  and  The  Warriors'  Tomb 
exists  only  in  two  prompter's  copies,  one  in 
Christiania,  the  other  in  Bergen.  The  latter 
is  the  one  which  he  regards  as  the  authorized 
version. 

The  piece  is  in  verse  and  has  a  good  move- 
ment and  swing  in  it.  It  may  be  called  a  dram- 
atized ballad,  and  treats  of  the  last  great  struggle 
between  Heathendom  and  Christendom.  Stu- 
dents of  English  history  know  how  the  Saxons 
wiped  out  Christianity  from  the  Roman  provinces 
they  conquered,  except  in  a  petty  mountainous 
district  in  Wales,  and  how  a  second  wave  of 
invaders  ruined  the  Celtic  church  of  Ireland 
25 


ICONOCLASTS 

and  the  Celtic  church  of  lona,  and  founded  an 
empire  in  Russia.  It  seemed  indeed  as  if  the 
men  who  went  to  death  hoping  to  drink  mead  in 
Valhalla,  would  drive  back  those  who  went  to 
battle  hoping  to  sing  hymns  among  the  cher- 
ubim. It  is  with  this  period  of  the  world's 
history  that  Ibsen's  juvenile  play  is  occupied. 

King  Gandalf  and  his  men  sail  to  Sicily  to 
avenge  the  death  of  his  father,  who  had  fallen 
in  a  Viking  raid.  There  the  rough  wielder  of 
the  sword  meets  the  Christian  maiden  Blanca, 
and  is  conquered  by  her.  The  word  "  forgive- 
ness "  overcomes  him.  He  has  sworn  to  die  or 
be  revenged,  so  now  resolves  to  die.  Then  he 
recognizes  in  a  Christian  hermit  the  father  whom 
he  had  believed  to  be  dead.  He  buries  only 
his  sword  and  his  Viking  spirit  in  the  tomb  of 
warriors. 

The  language  of  the  piece  is  decidedly  juve- 
nile, and  the  whole  of  no  dramatic  importance, 
yet  it  exhibits  traces  of  the  dramatic  Viking  of 
to-day.  In  an  address  delivered  at  the  Press 
Society's  meeting,  Dr.  Julius  Elias  points  out 
that  it  contains  another  Ibsen  motive,  "the 
ethical  mission  of  woman."  In  the  Lady  of 
Ostraat,  Ibsen's  character,  Nils  Lykke,  says,  "  A 
woman  is  the  most  powerful  thing  on  earth ;  in 
her  hands  it  lies  to  lead  the  man  where  God 
would  have  him,"  and  here  Gandalf  referring  to 
an  old  saga  says  :  — 

'Tis  said  that  to  Valfather's  share  belongs 
.Only  one-half  of  the  slain  warrior ; 
,26 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

The  other  half  falls  into  Freia's  lot. 
This  saying  I  could  never  understand, 
But  now  I  grasp  it.     A  slain  warrior 
Am  I  myself —  and  the  best  half  of  me 
Belongs  to  Freia. 

And  Blanca  leads  Gandalf  where  God  would 
have  him ;  by  her  the  rude  sea-king  has  his 
moral  feelings  touched,  the  heathen  becomes  a 
Christian,  the  sea-rover  a  spiritual  champion. 
She  tells  him  that  the  Northland  that  set  out 
over  the  ocean  to  conquer  the  world  with  fire 
and  sword  is  called  to  "  deeds  of  the  spirit  on 
the  sea  of  thought." 

Dr.  Wicksteed  in  his  invaluable  lectures  on 
Henrik  Ibsen  gives  his  readers  some  specimen 
translations  in  prose  of  the  poem.  They  deal, 
in  the  main,  with  those  themes  dear  to  Tolstoy 
and  Zola,  —  The  Miner,  Afraid  of  the  Light, 
The  Torpedo  and  the  Ark,  Burnt  Ships,  The 
Eider  Duck — in  this  famous  lyric  as  bitter- 
sweet as  Heine's,  Ibsen  prefigured  his  own 
flight  from  his  native  land  to  the  South.  We 
are  told  by  some  that  Ibsen  was  a  man  aloof  from 
his  country,  a  hater  of  its  institutions.  No  man, 
not  even  Bjornson,  has  been  more  patriotic. 
He  has  loved  his  Norway  so  well  that  he  has 
seen  her  faults  and  has  not  hesitated  to  lay  on 
the  lash.  He  loves  the  people  quite  as  much  as 
Tolstoy  his  peasants ;  but  he  would  have  them 
stand  each  man  on  his  feet.  Like  Brand  he  has 
essayed  to  lead  them  to  the  heights,  and  never 
has  gone  down  to  their  level. 
27 


ICONOCLASTS 

Love's  Comedy  (1862)  is  of  especial  interest 
to  the  student  of  the  prose  plays.  In  it  are  float- 
ing, amorphous  perhaps,  the  motives  we  know 
so  well  of  the  later  Ibsen.  The  comedy  is 
accessible  to  English  readers,  for  it  has  been 
translated  by  C.  H.  Herford,  with  an  introduc- 
tion and  notes.  Falk  and  Svanhild  part  because 
they  fear  themselves,  —  she  to  marry  a  rich  mer- 
chant, he  to  go  his  poetic  path  and  attempt  to  fly 
against  the  wind.  The  cruel  satire  of  the  lines 
stirred  all  Norway.  The  paradox  of  two  young 
folk  abandoning  each  other  just  because  they 
fear  their  love  will  end  the  way  of  most  married 
love,  is  at  least  a  rare  one.  As  much  as  we 
admire  Svanhild 's  resolution  to  remember  her 
love  as  a  beautiful  ideal,  unshattered  by  material 
realization,  we  cannot  help  suspecting  that  sensi- 
ble old  Gulstad's  money  bags  have  a  charm  for 
her  practical  bourgeois  nature.  It  is  Ibsen  and 
his  problem  that  is  more  interesting ;  we  see  the 
parent  idea  of  a  long  line  of  children,  that  idea 
which  may  be  embodied  in  one  phrase,  —  never 
surrender  your  personality.  "  Nothing  abides 
but  the  lost"  might  be  a  motto  for  the  piece, 
as  Dr.  Herford  says.  Brandes  and  Wicksteed 
argue  most  interestingly  from  the  theme.  The 
young  Ibsen  had  recognized  the  essential  mock- 
ery of  so-called  romantic  love,  with  its  silly 
idealizations,  its  perplexed  awakenings,  its  future 
filled  with  desperate  unhappiness.  He  had  the 
courage  to  say  these  things  by  way  of  a  satirical 
parable,  and  there  arose  upon  the  air  a  burden 

28 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

of  disgust  and  hatred  :  cynic,  atheist,  brutal,  and 
shocking.  Ibsen  bore  it  as  he  bore  his  life  long 
the  attacks  of  press  and  public  — in  silence.  He 
could  wait,  and  wait  he  did. 

When  Lugne-Poe  produced  The  Comedy  of 
Love  at  his  Theatre  de  1'CEuvre,  the  translation 
by  Mile.  Colleville  and  F.  de  Zepelin,  Catulle 
Mendes,  who  had  been  quarrelling  with  M. 
Poe  to  the  extent  of  a  duel,  wrote  the  following 
criticism  of  Ibsen's  early  work.  It  illustrates 
the  real  Gallic  point  of  view  in  the  Ibsen 
controversy :  — 

It  seems  that  sensitive  admirers  of  Henrik  Ibsen 
do  not  class  The  Comedy  of  Love  among  the  master- 
pieces of  the  great  Norwegian.  I  am  glad  of  it  for 
the  sake  of  those  masterpieces.  The  thing  which  is 
displeasing  above  everything  in  this  piece,  where 
Ibsen's  genius  once  more  halts,  is  that  one  is  unable 
to  get  at  the  initial  intention  of  the  author.  What 
does  he  pretend  to  teach  by  making  to  evolute  and 
chatter  in  the  garden  of  a  country  house  —  what 
house  I  do  not  know,  but  for  certain  it  is  a  matri- 
monial one  —  a  number  of  engaged  couples,  married 
folks  and  parsons  who  are  the  fathers  of  a  dozen 
children  each  ?  Those  who  used  to  love  love  no 
more ;  those  who  were  romantic  have  become  bour- 
geois ;  those  who  are  still  romantic  will  become  bour- 
geois. Then  there  is  a  poet,  whose  lyrics  we  should 
classify  in  France  —  but  we  are  in  Lugn£-Poe's 
house !  —  as  provincial,  who  treats  like  a  Philistine 
all  these  poor  engaged  persons,  these  engaged  lovers, 
of  our  everyday  life.  As  for  him,  being  a  poet 
(Heavens  1  how  mediocre  his  verses  must  be  1 )  — 
29 


ICONOCLASTS 

he  pursues  the  vague,  the  immaterial,  the  sublime. 
He  would  like  very  well  to  carry  with  him  in  this 
pursuit  a  young  person,  once  upon  a  time  "  poetical," 
but  all  the  same  strongly  "practical,"  who,  after  in- 
clining for  an  instant  toward  a  life  of  devotion  and 
devoiiement  with  the  poet,  does  not  hesitate  to  espouse 
a  very  rich  merchant,  who  evidently  has  read  Emile 
Augier,  badly  translated. 

It  is  with  difficulty  I  discover  the  object  of  Henrik 
Ibsen.  This  puzzle  is,  however,  very  excusable  in 
a  French  critic,  since  it  is  shared  by  critics  of  the 
North.  Madame  Ahlberg  (read  Ernest  Tissot's 
book)  thinks  that  Ibsen  desires  to  show  the  con- 
trast between  love  and  the  caricature  of  it  which 
we  see  in  marriage.  Georg  Brandes,  the  celebrated 
Danish  critic,  in  The  Comedy  of  Love  esteems  it 
impossible  to  know  where  he  would  carry  the  poet, 
and  says,  "the  only  certain  thing  is  his  pessimistic 
conception  of  love  and  marriage." 

But  Henry  Jaeger,  Norwegian  critic,  is  not  even 
sure  of  this,  and  to  his  mind  this  piece  indicates  that 
there  are  "  sentiments  of  love,  like  those  of  religion  ; 
that  is  to  say,  which  lose  in  sincerity  the  moment 
they  are  expressed."  On  which  side  should  a 
Frenchman  have  an  opinion  on  points  which  so 
divide  much  nearer  judges  ?  At  the  bottom  I  am 
not  far  from  believing  that  Ibsen  premeditated  mak- 
ing it  understood  that  even  in  love  all  is  vanity  upon 
this  earth.  Ecclesiastes  was  of  this  advice,  and 
banality,  that  gray  sun,  shines  on  all  the  world. 
Is  this  to  say  that  The  Comedy  of  Love  is  a  medio- 
cre work?  Not  at  all.  Denuded  of  all  dramatic 
interest,  puerile  because  of  its  romantic  philosophy, 
and  often  tedious  to  the  point  of  inspiring  us  with 

30 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

the  fear  of  a  never  ending  yawn,  this  piece,  all  the 
same  a  dream  of  youth  already  virile,  agitates  in  its 
incoherence,  ideas,  forces,  revolts,  ironies,  and  hopes, 
which  a  little  later  in  more  sure  works,  obscure  but 
sure,  will  be  the  sad  challenges  of  human  personality. 
And  moreover,  in  the  lyrical  language  of  personages 
too  emphatically  lyrical,  which  proceeds  from  that 
Suabianism  which  Heine  vanquished,  among  all 
the  little  birds,  all  the  little  flowers,  all  the  starlit 
nights,  and  other  sillinesses  of  German  romance, 
towers,  flashes,  and  radiates  resplendent  the  ardent 
soul  of  the  true  poet. 


Ill 

THE  VIKINGS  AT  HELGELAND 

(1858) 

With  Dr.  P.  H.  Wicksteed's  affirmation, 
"  Ibsen  is  a  poet,"  humming  in  my  ears,  I  went 
to  the  most  beautiful  theatre  in  London,  the 
Imperial,  to  hear,  to  see,  above  all  to  see,  the 
Norwegian  dramatist's  Vikings,  a  few  days 
before  it  was  withdrawn,  in  May,  1903.  For 
one  thing  the  production  was  doomed  at  the 
start :  it  was  wofully  miscast.  The  most  daring 
imagination  cannot  picture  Ellen  Terry  as  the 
fierce  warrior  wife  of  Gunnar  Headman.  Once 
a  creature  capriciously  sweet,  tender,  arch,  and 
delightfully  arrogant,  Miss  Terry  is  now  long 
past  her  prime.*  To  play  Hjordis  was  murdering 
Ibsen  outright. 

31 


ICONOCLASTS 

But  the  play  had  its  compensations.  Miss 
Terry's  son,  Edward  Gordon  Craig,  exercised 
full  sway  with  the  stage,  lighting,  costumes. 
He  is  a  young  man  with  considerable  imagina- 
tion and  a  taste  for  the  poetic  picturesque.  He 
has  endeavoured  to  escape  the  deadly  monotony 
of  London  stage  lighting,  and,  unaided,  has 
worked  out  several  interesting  problems.  Abol- 
ishing foot  and  border  lights,  sending  shafts  of 
luminosity  from  above,  Mr.  Craig  secures  unex- 
pected and  bizarre  effects.  It  need  be  hardly 
added  that  these  same  effects  are  suitable  only 
for  plays  into  which  the  element  of  romance 
and  of  the  fantastic  largely  enter.  We  see  no 
"  flies,"  no  shaky  unconvincing  side  scenes,  no 
foolish  flocculent  borders,  no  staring  back-cloths. 
The  impression  created  is  one  of  a  real  un- 
reality. For  example,  when  the  curtains  are 
parted,  a  rocky  slope,  Nordish,  rugged,  for- 
bidding, is  viewed,  the  sea,  an  inky  pool,  mist- 
hemmed,  washing  at  its  base.  From  above 
falls  a  curious,  sinister  light  which  gives  pur- 
plish tones  to  the  stony  surfaces  and  masks 
the  faces  of  the  players  with  mysterious  shad- 
ows. The  entire  atmosphere  is  one  of  awe,  of 
dread. 

With  his  second  tableau  Mr.  Craig  is  even 
more  successful.  It  is  the  feast  room  in  Gun- 
nar's  house.  It  is  a  boxed-in  set,  though  it  gives 
one  the  feeling  of  a  spaciousness  that  on  the 
very  limited  stage  of  the  Imperial  is  surprising. 
A  circular  platform  with  a  high  seat  at  the  back, 
32 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

and  a  long  table  with  rough  benches,  railed  in, 
make  up  an  interior  far  from  promising.  A  fire 
burns  in  a  peculiar  hearth  in  the  centre,  and 
there  are  raised  places  for  the  women.  Outside 
it  is  dark.  The  stage  manager  contrived  to  get 
an  extraordinary  atmosphere  of  gloomy  radiance 
in  this  barbaric  apartment.  He  sent  his  light 
shivering  from  on  high,  and  Miss  Terry's  Valkyr 
dress  was  a  gorgeous  blue  when  she  stood  in  the 
hub  of  the  room.  All  the  light  was  tempered 
by  a  painter's  perception  of  lovely  hues.  This 
scene  has  been  admired  very  much.  For  many, 
however,  the  third  act  bore  off  the  victory.  A 
simple  space  of  hall,  a  large  casement,  a  dais, 
the  whole  flooded  by  daylight.  Here  the  quality 
of  light  was  of  the  purest,  withal  hard,  as  befitted 
a  northern  latitude. 

In  the  last  scene  of  all  Mr.  Craig  wrestled 
with  the  darkness  and  obtained  several  effects, 
though  none  startling  or  novel. 

The  Vikings  was  first  planned  for  verse  —  a 
Norse  tragedy  of  fate  in  the  Greek  style.  But 
the  theme  demanded  a  drastic,  laconic  prose, 
with  nothing  unessential,  and,  as  Jaeger  points 
out,  without  monologues,  or  lyric  outbursts  ;  the 
dialogue  glows  with  passion,  but  the  glow  never 
becomes  flame  or  gives  out  sparks;  here  are 
caustic  wit  and  biting  repartee,  but  the  fighting 
is  not  carried  on  with  light  rapiers ;  we  seem  to 
be  watching  a  battle  for  life  and  death  with  the 
short,  heavy  swords  which  the  old  Vikings  used 
—  hatred  and  love,  friendship  and  vengeance, 
33 


ICONOCLASTS 

scorn  and  grief  —  all  are  as  intense  as  the  sagas 
themselves. 

The  dramatic  poet  has  been  reproached,  as 
his  biographer  asserts,  for  "  degrading  the  demi- 
gods "  of  the  Volsung  Saga  into  mere  Norwegian 
and  Icelandic  Vikings  of  the  age  of  Erik  Blodox 
—  or  Bloody  Axe.  Other  critics,  again,  have 
commended  him  for  making  Vikings  out  of  the 
Volsung  Saga. 

Be  it  as  it  may,  the  result  is  drama  of  an  ex- 
cellent sort;  romantic  drama  if  you  will,  yet 
informed  by  a  certain  realistic  quality.  Here 
again  the  woman  is  the  wielder  of  the  power, 
and  not  the  man.  Hjordis  is  the  very  incarna- 
tion of  violence,  of  the  lust  of  conquest,  of  hate, 
revenge.  She  would  overthrow  kingdoms  to 
secure  the  man  she  loved,  and  that  man  is  only 
a  tool  for  her  passionate  ambitions. 

The  Vikings  at  Helgeland,  then,  is  not  exactly 
a  dramatic  paraphrase  of  the  Volsung  Saga. 
Ibsen  absorbed  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients  of 
his  race  and  made  of  them  an  organic  work  full 
of  the  old  spirit,  heroic,  powerful,  and  informed 
with  the  harsh  romance  of  the  time.  This  play 
is  not  among  his  greatest,  but  it  is  none  the  less 
interesting  as  a  connecting  link  of  his  youth  and 
early  manhood. 

Let  us  follow  the  piece  scene  by  scene,  noting 
the  easy  grasp  of  character,  the  pithy  dialogue, 
the  atmosphere  of  repressed  passion  and  fero- 
cious cruelty.  There  are  evidences  of  crude 
power  from  first  to  last.  Upon  the  purple- 
34 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

spotted  rocks  near  the  home  of  Gunnar  Head- 
man on  the  island  of  Helgeland  —  in  the  north 
of  Norway  —  Sigurd  comes  up  from  his  two 
war-ships  which  lie  down  in  the  misty  cove.  In 
the  person  of  Oscar  Asche  —  familiar  to  New 
York  theatre-goers  as  the  appalling  Hebraic 
millionnaire  in  Pinero's  Iris  —  this  Sigurd  is  a 
formidable  warrior,  with  hair  in  two  blond  plaits, 
steel-spiked  cap,  and  fighting  harness. 

He  resembled  Van  Dyck's  Siegmund  as  to 
girth,  and  with  his  big  bare  arms,  his  bracelets, 
sword,  and  heavy  stride,  he  gave  one  the  im- 
pression of  clanking  grandeur,  of  implacable 
phlegm.  At  once  a  row  begins,  for  Oernulf  of 
the  Fjords,  an  Icelandic  chieftain,  bars  the  pas- 
sage of  the  Viking.  The  pair  fight.  Fast  from 
ship  and  cavern  pour  warriors,  and  Dagny,  the 
wife  of  Sigurd.  Then  hostilities  cease.  In  the 
young  woman  Oernulf  recognizes  a  daughter 
wed  without  his  consent  by  Sigurd;  for  this 
hero,  after  giving  up  Hjordis  —  the  foster 
daughter  of  Oernulf  —  to  Gunnar,  marries  Oer- 
nulf's  real  child,  Dagny.  As  already  indicated, 
this  scene  was  managed  with  remarkable  deft- 
ness at  the  Imperial.  That  sterling  actor,  Hoi- 
man  Clark,  no  stranger  in  America,  as  Oernulf, 
carried  away  the  major  honours  in  this  stirring 
episode.  His  very  mannerisms  lent  themselves 
to  an  amiable  complicity  with  the  lines  and 
gestures.  We  soon  learn  from  his  words  that 
he  means  to  extort  his  pound  of  flesh  from 
Gunnar  for  carrying  off  Hjordis.  Sigurd  pla- 
35 


ICONOCLASTS 

cates  him  with  presents,  with  assurances  of 
esteem.  Dagny  pleads  for  forgiveness,  and 
wins  it. 

Then  enters  Kara,  the  peasant,  pursued  by 
the  house-carles  of  Hjordis,  and  her  motive  is 
sounded  for  the  first  time  in  this  drama  of 
thwarted  love  and  hate.  The  wretched  peas- 
ant has  killed  a  subject  of  the  Queen.  She  is 
revengeful.  He  pleads  for  his  life  and  is  prom- 
ised protection.  Hjordis  soon  appears.  She 
looks  like  the  traditional  Valkyr  and  is  armed 
with  a  lance.  Her  nature  is  expressed  in  the 
cold  way  she  greets  her  foster  sister,  Dagny, 
though  her  face  brightens  at  the  sight  of  Sigurd. 

Violently  reproached  by  her  foster  father, 
Hjordis  responds  in  kind.  Let  Gunnar  be 
weak;  let  him  renew  his  pact  of  friendship 
with  Sigurd.  She  owes  nothing  to  Oernulf. 
He  has  slain  her  real  father  in  unfair  fight  — 
then  she  is  called  a  wanton  by  the  angry  chief- 
tain and  her  rage  flames  up  so  that  the  dark 
rocks  upon  which  they  all  stand  seem  to  be 
illumined.  Kara,  in  the  interim,  has  gone  away 
muttering  his  vengeance ;  Hjordis,  dissimulat- 
ing, invites  all  to  a  great  feast  in  Gunnar's 
house  and  departs.  Sigurd  would  go.  Dagny 
mistrusts.  At  last  Sigurd  tells  his  too-long-kept 
secret.  It  was  he  that  slew  the  white  bear  and 
won  the  woman  beloved  of  Gunnar.  Dagny  is 
amazed,  and  after  being  conjured  by  her  hus- 
band to  keep  precious  this  story  she  promises. 
But  she  wistfully  regards  the  ring  upon  her  arm, 
36 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

the  ring  of  Hjordis,  plucked  from  her  wrist  by 
Sigurd  (the  ring  of  the  Nibelungs!).  Sigurd 
bids  her  hide  it,  for  if  Hjordis  catches  a  glimpse 
of  it  the  deception  will  be  as  plain  as  the  round 
shield  of  the  sun  blazing  on  high.  And  then  — 
woe  to  all !  The  curtains  close. 

Act  II  is  devoted  to  the  feast  and  the  strange 
events  which  happened  thereat.  Ibsen's  magic 
now  begins  to  work.  His  psychologic  bent  is  felt 
the  moment  after  we  see  Dagny  and  Hjordis  in 
conference.  The  mild  wife  of  Sigurd  wonders 
audibly  at  the  other's  depression.  Why  should 
she  bemoan  her  fate  with  such  a  house,  a  fair 
and  goodly  abode  ?  Hjordis  turns  fiercely  upon 
her  and  replies,  "  Cage  an  eagle  and  it  will  bite 
at  the  wires,  be  they  of  iron  or  of  gold."  But 
has  she  not  a  little  son,  Egil  ?  Better  no  son  at 
all  for  a  mother  who  is  a  wanton,  a  leman ! 
She  recalls  with  sullen  wrath  the  words  of 
Oernulf.  In  vain  Dagny  seeks  to  pacify  her. 
The  older  woman  is  of  the  race  of  Titans.  She 
tells  with  pride  the  story  of  the  queen  who  took 
her  son  and  sewed  his  kirtle  fast  to  his  flesh. 
So  would  she  treat  her  Egil ! 

"  Hjordis,  Hjordis !  "  cries  the  tender-hearted 
listener.  For  this  she  is  mocked.  Hjordis 
further  tortures  her  by  asking  if  she  has  accom- 
panied her  husband  into  battle,  into  the  halls  of 
the  mighty.  "  Didst  thou  not  don  harness  and 
take  up  arms  ? "  Dagny  answers  in  the  nega- 
tive. Gunnar  is  extolled  for  his  deed,  a  mighty 
deed  as  yet  not  excelled  by  Sigurd.  The  lis 
37 


ICONOCLASTS 

tener  seems  on  the  point  of  denying  this 
Hjordis  notes  her  agitation  and  presses  her, 
but  Dagny  is  faithful  to  her  word ;  she  keeps 
Sigurd's  secret.  Then  in  a  burst,  almost  lyric, 
Hjordis  confesses  her  love  for  combat  to  the 
sisters  of  Hilda,  the  terrible  Valkyrs  who  fly  in 
the  sky,  carrying  dead  warriors  to  Valhall.  She 
loves,  too,  witchcraft,  and  would  be  a  witch-wife 
astride  of  a  whale  and  skim  the  storm  waves. 
"Thou  speakest  shameful  things,"  says  the 
frightened  Dagny,  and  is  scoffed  at  for  her 
timidity. 

Gradually  the  feast  begins.  The  warriors 
assemble.  I  cannot  say  that  I  admired  their 
costumes,  reminding  me,  as  they  did,  of  crazy- 
quilts.  Sigurd  and  Gunnar  enter  arm  in  arm. 
Egil,  the  hope  of  Gunnar's  house,  has  been  sent 
away ;  his  father  feared  the  descent  of  Oernulf 
and  his  men.  He  now  regrets  the  absence  of 
his  boy.  Oernulf  is  not  present,  but  is  repre- 
sented by  his  youngest  son,  Thorolf.  After  the 
drinking  has  begun  the  trouble-breeding  Hjordis 
weaves  her  spell  of  disaster.  She  sets  boasting 
the  warriors,  forces  the  hapless  Gunnar  to  de- 
scribe how  he  slew  the  great  white  bear,  and 
openly  proclaims  him  a  better  man  than  Sigurd. 
Even  this  breach  of  hospitality  does  not  embitter 
the  friends.  Thorolf,  however,  is  hot,  imprudent, 
and  at  a  chance  word  from  Hjordis  is  set  on 
fire.  Miss  Terry,  it  must  be  confessed,  played 
this  entire  scene  with  great  dexterity.  Her 
broken  phrases,  —  for  she  has  not  a  prolonged 
38 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

note  in  her  compass,  —  her  scornful  mien,  her 
raucous  voice,  and  shrewish  gestures  were  admi- 
rable agents  for  the  expression  of  ill-stifled  hate. 
Taunted  beyond  his  self-control,  Thorolf  tells 
the  woman  that  Egil  has  been  kidnapped  by 
Oernulf  and  his  other  sons.  Instantly  she 
screams  that  Egil  has  been  slain.  Thorolf 
leaves,  swearing  that  he  will  be  avenged ;  that, 
"  Ere  eventide  shall  Gunnar  and  his  wife  be 
childless." 

At  this  juncture  Gunnar,  who  has  hitherto 
seemed  a  lymphatic  sort  of  person,  seizes  his 
battle-axe,  and,  despite  Sigurd's  word  of  warn- 
ing, follows  Thorolf  and  kills  him.  A  moment 
later  enter  Oernulf,  bearing  in  his  arms  the 
child  Egil,  happy  and  unharmed.  It  is  a  strik- 
ing climax.  To  the  father,  already  bereaved  of 
his  other  sons,  lost  in  the  fight  with  the  treach- 
erous peasant,  Kara,  for  the  possession  of  the 
child,  must  be  told  the  terrible  news.  Thorolf 
is  the  apple  of  his  eye,  the  last  of  his  race. 
Broken-hearted  Gunnar  explains.  Outraged  at 
the  deed  caused  by  Hjordis,  the  timid  Dagny 
gives  her  the  lie  when  Gunnar's  feat  is  again 
nauseatingly  dwelt  upon.  "  It  is  Sigurd  who 
won  the  woman ;  look  at  the  ring  on  my  arm  !  " 
Amazed,  infuriated,  Hjordis  turns  upon  her  hus- 
band. Is  it  true?  Gunnar  confesses  without 
shame.  Sigurd  presses  his  hand  and  proclaims 
him  a  brave  man,  though  he  did  not  slay  the 
bear.  The  hall  empties  and  after  Dagny — • 
woman-like  —  triumphantly  exults  and  cries, 
.39 


ICONOCLASTS 

"  Who  is  now  the  mightiest  man  at  the  board 
—  my  husband  or  thine?"  Hjordis  is  left  to 
her  miserable  thoughts.  She  soon  makes  up 
her  mind,  "Now  have  I  but  one  thing  left  to 
do  —  but  one  deed  to  brood  upon ;  Sigurd  or  I 
must  die." 

These  words  recall  the  fatal  Siegfrieds-Tod ! 
of  Gotterdammerung.  Both  Wagner  and  Ibsen 
followed  the  main  lines  of  the  immortal  epic. 

If  in  this  act  the  student,  curious  of  those 
correspondences  which  subtly  knit  together  ages 
widely  asunder,  discovers  a  modern  tone,  he  will 
regain  the  larger  air  of  the  antique  North  in 
Act  III.  It  belongs  essentially  to  Hjordis.  In 
the  free  daylight  we  discover  her  weaving  a  bow- 
string. Near  her,  on  a  table,  lie  a  bow  and  some 
arrows.  The  one  soliloquy  of  the  piece  begins 
the  act.  It  is  short,  pregnant — what  is  to  fol- 
low is  incorporated  in  its  nuances.  She  pulls  at 
the  bowstring.  It  is  tough,  well  weighted.  "  Be- 
fooled, befooled  by  him,  by  Sigurd  — "  But 
ere  many  days  have  passed  — ! 

Gunnar  enters.  He  has  had  a  bad  night.  He 
cannot  sleep  because  of  the  murdered  Thorolf. 
Then  for  a  few  bars  of  this  barbaric  music  Ibsen 
relapses  into  pure  Shakespeare.  We  see  Lady 
Macbeth  and  her  epileptic  husband  merge  into 
the  figures  of  the  fiercer  Brynhild  and  the 
weaker  Gunther.  The  man  is  urged  on  to  be- 
tray, to  slay  his  friend. 

Hjordis  lies  to  Gunnar  —  as  lied,  when  mad 
with  jealousy,  Brynhild  to  Gunther  and  Hagen; 
40 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

but  this  same  Hjordis  has  hardly  the  excuse  of 
her  bigger-souled  sister. 

Gunnar  weakens.  He  describes  a  dream  that 
he  has  had  of  late.  "  Methought  I  had  done 
the  deed  thou  cravest ;  Sigurd  lay  slain  on  the 
earth ;  thou  didst  stand  beside  him  and  thy  face 
was  wondrous  pale.  Then  said  I,  'Art  thou 
glad,  now  that  I  have  done  thy  will  ? '  But 
thou  didst  laugh  and  answer,  'Blither  were  I 
didst  thou,  Gunnar,  lie  there  in  Sigurd's  stead.'  " 
111  at  ease,  Hjordis  flouts  this  dream  and  pushes 
her  cause  to  an  issue.  Sigurd  must  die.  How  ? 
"Do  the  deed,  Gunnar  —  and  the  heavy  days 
will  be  past."  She  promises  cheap  joys  —  love. 
He  leaves  her  clutched  to  the  very  heart  by 
her  baleful  words.  The  next  interview  is  with 
Dagny.  No  trouble  now  in  winging  this  emo- 
tional bird.  Already  she  repents  of  her  cruelty 
the  previous  night  and  would  make  amends. 
Hjordis  recognizes  the  malleability  of  the  woman 
and  pierces  her  armour  by  proving  to  her  her  own 
unfitness  for  the  high  position  as  wife  of  Sigurd 
—  now  the  sole  hero.  She  plays  all  the  music 
there  is  hidden  within  this  string,  and  it  sounds 
its  feeble,  little,  discouraged  tune  without  further 
ado.  Dagny  feels  her  worthlessness,  has  always 
felt  it ;  better  let  Sigurd  go  unattended,  unham- 
pered, and  quite  alone  upon  that  shining  path 
of  glory  which  surely  awaits  him.  She  leaves. 
Treading  upon  her  heels  almost  comes  the  re- 
doubtable Sigurd  to  this  exposed  cavern  of  the 
wicked.  Too  soon  he  falls  into  the  toils,  not 
41 


ICONOCLASTS 

because,  like  Hercules  with  Omphale,  he  is 
merely  a  sensuous  weakling,  but  because  he  has 
loved  Hjordis  from  the  first.  The  plot  curdles. 
Explanations  fall  like  leaves  in  the  thick  of 
autumn.  If  Sigurd  has  loved,  Hjordis  has  an- 
ticipated him.  This  eagle  bends  curved  beak 
and  is  of  the  lowly  for  the  moment.  She  proves 
to  Sigurd  that  the  one  unpardonable  sin  is  the 
repudiation  of  love. 

For  another  and  a  nobler  motive  Sigurd  gives 
place  to  his  beloved  friend  Gunnar,  yet  none  the 
less  is  his  a  crime.  It  must  be  expiated,  as  was 
John  Gabriel  Borkman's.  Curious  it  is  to  note 
the  persistency  through  a  half  century  of  an 
idea.  Like  Flaubert,  Ibsen  did  not  really  add 
to  his  early  acquired  stock  of  images  and  ideas. 

Tempted  almost  beyond  his  powers,  Sigurd 
manages  to  save  his  self-respect  and  remain 
faithful  to  his  wife.  He  recognizes  his  mistake ; 
he  has  always  loved  the  other  woman,  though 
he  never  knew  before  that  this  affection  was 
returned.  Hjordis  bids  him  renounce  all  for  her  ; 
together  they  will  win  the  throne  of  Harfager  — 
the  ultimate  dream  of  Sigurd.  Sadly  he  bends 
his  back  to  her  gibes,  to  her  devilish  suggestions. 
One  way  is  open  to  him.  He  can  fight  Gunnar 
in  behalf  of  Oernulf  and  thus  avenge  the  death 
of  Thorolf  and  put  an  end  to  an  existence  be- 
come insupportable.  Hjordis  has  other  plans. 

Act  IV  is  short.  We  see  the  unhappy  Oer- 
nulf lamenting  his  murdered  son  before  a  black 
grave  mound.  He  sings  his  Drapa  over  the 
42 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

dead  body.  A  storm  arises.  It  is  a  night  of 
terrors.  Kara,  the  peasant,  still  unappeased, 
burns  the  home  of  Gunnar.  Hjordis  meets 
Sigurd  and,  after  entreating  vainly,  shoots  him 
with  the  bow  and  arrow  she  has  made  expressly 
for  the  purpose.  A  strand  of  her  hair  is  en- 
twisted  in  the  bowstring.  Sigurd,  dying,  tells 
her  to  her  horror  that  he  is  not  a  pagan,  that 
even  in  death  he  will  not  meet  her  "over  there," 
for  he  is  a  Christian  man ;  the  white  God  is  his ; 
King  yEthelstan  of  England  taught  him  to  know 
the  new  religion.  (The  epoch  of  the  play  is  A.D. 
933.)  Despairingly,  the  strong-souled  woman 
casts  herself  into  a  chasm  and  is  translated  into 
Valhall  by  her  immortal  sisters,  the  Valkyrs. 
This  last  scene  is  hopelessly  undramatic  and, 
as  given  at  the  Imperial,  quite  meaningless. 
After  Hjordis  commits  suicide  the  curtains  shut 
out  the  scene. 

In  the  play,  however,  Oernulf,  Dagny,  Gun- 
nar, and  Egil  are  discovered  watching  the  storm. 
Gunnar  claims  the  protection  of  the  man  whose 
son  he  has  slain.  The  body  of  Sigurd  is  found, 
and  the  arrow  of  Hjordis.  "  So  bitterly  did  she 
hate  him,"  whispers  Dagny  to  herself  with  true 
Ibsenesque  irony.  Gunnar  says  aside,  "  She 
has  slain  him  —  the  night  before  the  combat; 
then  she  loved  me  after  all."  These  sly,  pitiless 
strokes  would  have  proved  too  much  to  a  Brit- 
ish audience,  sufficiently  outraged  by  several  of 
Hjordis's  very  plain  speeches.  The  little  Egil 
sees  his  mother  on  a  black  horse  "  home-faring  " 
43 


ICONOCLASTS 

with  the  Valkyrs.  The  storm  passes  ;  peacefully 
the  moon  casts  its  mild  radiance  upon  this  field 
of  strange  conflict. 


IV 

THE  THREE  EPICS 

BRAND    (1866),    PEER   GYNT    (1867),  EMPEROR  AND 
GALILEAN  (1873) 

In  his  three  epical  works,  —  for  epics  they 
are,  —  Brand,  Peer  Gynt,  and  Emperor  and 
Galilean,  Ibsen  reached  poetic  heights  that  he 
has  never  since  revisited.  The  spiritual  fer- 
mentation attendant  upon  his  first  visit  to  Italy 
in  May,  1864,  gave  Norway,  indeed  all  Scan- 
dinavia, its  first  modern  epic.  And  it  is  not 
strange  that  this  Italian  journey  should  produce 
such  monumental  results.  Goethe  was  at  heart 
never  so  German  as  in  Italy ;  and  Ibsen,  one  of 
the  few  names  that  will  be  coupled  with  the 
poet  of  Faust  when  the  intellectual  history  of 
the  past  century  is  written,  was  never  such  a 
Northman  as  in  Rome,  though  he  had  left  his 
native  land  full  of  bitterness,  a  self-imposed 
exile,  doomed  to  exist  on  the  absurd  stipend 
doled  out  to  him  with  niggardly  hands  by  the 
Norwegian  government.  Yet,  instead  of  turn- 
ing to  antiquity,  he  penned  Brand,  one  of 
the  few  great  epics  since  Milton  and  Goethe, 
and  then  as  a  satiric  pendant  let  loose  the  de 
44 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

moniac  powers  of  his  ironic  fantasy  in  Peer 
Gynt.  In  this  vast  symphony,  Brand  is  the 
first  sombre  movement,  Peer  Gynt  a  brilliant 
Mephistophelian  scherzo,  while  Emperor  and 
Galilean  is  the  solemn  and  mystic  last  move- 
ment. 

Brand  places  Ibsen  among  the  great  mystics 
beginning  with  Dante  and  including  the  names 
of  Da  Vinci,  Swedenborg,  mad  naked  Blake, 
and  Goethe.  Unlike  the  poet  of  the  Divine 
Comedy  he  set  his  hell  on  the  heights,  for  the 
hell  of  the  defeated  is  the  story  of  that  stern 
Brand  who  left  his  church  in  the  valley,  sum- 
moned his  flock  to  follow  him  and  found  an 
Ice  Church  on  the  high  hills.  Only  Hamlet 
and  Faust  are  recalled  to  the  reader  as  they  see 
this  soul  warped  by  its  ideal  of  "  All  or  Noth- 
ing," and  in  the  spiritual  throes  of  doubt,  even 
despair.  His  God  is  the  merciless  Jahveh 
of  the  later  Hebraic  dispensation,  not  the 
Eloihim  of  the  earlier.  Weakness  of  will  is 
the  one  unpardonable  sin.  Heroic  as  a  Viking, 
he  stands  for  all  the  Norwegian  race  was  not 
when  Ibsen  wrote  his  poem.  Life  broken  into 
tiny  fragments,  waverers  and  compromisers,  he 
lashes  his  countrymen  so  that  across  these 
pages  you  seem  to  hear  the  whistle  of  the 
knotted  thongs.  Conventional  religion  comes 
in  for  its  share  of  abuse  from  the  tongue  of  this 
new  Elijah.  The  wife  Agnes,  one  of  the  poet's 
most  charming  creations,  is  at  first  attracted 
by  the  shallow,  artistic  Einar.  When  she  meets 
45 


ICONOCLASTS 

Brand  her  soul  goes  out  to  him.  "  Did  you  see 
him  tower  as  he  talked  ? "  she  asks  her  com- 
panion. Bat  as  he  sacrificed  his  mother  to  his 
ideal,  so  he  sacrifices  his  wife.  Their  child 
does  not  thrive  in  the  gloomy  valley  where  this 
cure  of  souls  abides.  No  matter.  He  remains. 
God's  will  be  done.  The  child  dies.  His 
clothes  are  sold  to  a  gypsy  because  Agnes  has 
shed  tears  over  them  —  a  human  weakness. 
She  opens  her  window  in  the  evenings  so  that 
the  lamplight  will  fall  across  the  grave  of  her 
child.  That  consolation,  too,  is  denied  her. 
Be  hard!  might  be  the  Nietzschean  motto  of 
her  husband.  And  so  she  dies.  His  mother 
died  saying,  "  God  is  not  so  hard  as  my  son," 
because  he  refused  her  the  sacraments.  She 
had  ill-gotten  wealth.  To  make  restitution  was 
his  demand  —  All  or  Nothing.  He  would  not 
make  bargains,  be  a  paltry  go-between  for  God 
and  man.  His  nobility  of  character  repels. 
People  feel  his  power  but  find  him  unapproach- 
able. The  laissez-faire  policy,  the  easy-going 
philosophy  of  the  official  servants  of  God,  raises 
wrath  in  his  bosom.  He  would  drive  these 
blasphemers  from  the  sacred  precincts  of  the 
temple.  It  is  his  realization  of  the  hopelessness 
of  reforming  men  by  the  old  means  that  sends 
him  to  the  mountains.  He  has  built  a  church, 
for  the  old  church  is  too  small.  But  the  new, 
a  symbol  of  the  soaring  soul,  is  misunderstood. 
It  is  a  gift  from  Brand  to  his  people,  and  so 
horrified  is  he  with  his  failure  to  stir  these  petty 
46 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

souls  that  he  throws  the  church  key  in  the 
river  and  summons  the  multitude  to  follow  him 
upward,  up  there  in  the  clouds,  where  the  true 
God  abides  away  from  the  vileness  of  mart  and 
palace.  Some  follow,  many  mock,  and  he  is 
finally  stoned  and  deserted.  A  crazy  creature, 
Gerd,  who  symbolizes  wildness,  an  egotist  who 
scorns  human  ties ;  she  it  is  who  is  appointed 
by  the  poet  to  open  Brand's  eyes.  His  spiritual 
pride  has  been  his  downfall,  for  while  thinking 
of  others  he  has  not  "  found  salvation  for  his 
own  soul."  The  avalanche  which  she  starts 
overwhelms  them  both,  but  not  before  he  hears 
a  voice  answer  his  prayer — does  mankind's  will, 
then,  count  for  nothing.  "He  is  the  God  of 
Love,"  is  the  reply. 

Havelock  Ellis  thinks  that  "  we  have  to  look 
back  to  the  scene  in  the  death  of  Lear "  to 
attain  a  like  imaginative  height  in  literature. 
Ibsen  has  set  his  character  in  a  most  life-like 
milieu.  His  people  are  painted  with  a  broad, 
firm  hand.  The  mayor,  the  schoolmaster,  the 
doctor,  the  sexton,  are  living  men,  and  their 
worldly  natures  are  clearly  indicated.  Prophet 
Brand  is,  though  Ibsen  told  Georg  Brandes 
that  he  could  have  made  him  sculptor  or  poli- 
tician, as  well  as  priest.  Soren  Kierkegaard 
and  his  revolt  from  orthodoxy  may  have  sup- 
plied the  poet  for  his  portrait.  He,  however, 
more  than  half  hints  that  it  was  Gustav 
Lammers  who  was  the  original  of  Brand, 
a  fiery  nonconformist  man  who  built  his  own 
47 


ICONOCLASTS 

church  and  seceded  from  the  current  evangeli- 
cism. 

But,  after  all,  Brand  is  Ibsen's  own  portrait, 
is  a  mask  for  Ibsen  himself.  The  beauty,  grim 
as  it  is,  and  the  picturesque  variety  of  this  great 
poem  almost  match  its  ethical  grandeur. 

The  Ice  Church  is  too  cold  for  humanity, 
Brand's  ideal  too  inhuman.  Yet  he  has  willed, 
he  has  not  wholly  failed.  His  error  was  in  its 
application  —  in  not  willing  enough  for  himself. 
"  Be  what  you  are,"  he  exhorts  the  weak  Einar, 
"whatever  it  is,  but  be  it  out  and  out."  No 
compromise  with  the  powers  of  evil  —  yet 
Brand's  doctrine  led  to  his  destruction.  Not 
to  will  is  a  crime,  to  will  too  much  leads  to 
madness.  What  is  the  answer  to  this  per- 
plexing problem  ?  Ibsen  does  not  give  it.  In 
his  phraseology  "to  be  oneself  is  to  lose 
oneself."  And  Brand,  who  was  for  "All  or 
Nothing,"  severed  his  dearest  ties  and  finally 
was  destroyed  himself. 

The  complexity  must  not  repel  the  student. 
Mr.  C.  H.  Herford's  translation  with  the  illu- 
minating introduction  is  well  worth  the  read- 
ing. He  thinks  that  the  "  Norwegian  priest 
is  tortured  ...  as  was  Hamlet;  Hamlet's 
power  of  resolve  is  depleted  by  the  restless 
discursiveness  of  his  intellect;  Brand's  failure 
in  sympathetic  insight  hangs  together  with  his 
peremptory  self-assertion.  .  .  .  Unless  appear- 
ances wholly  deceive,  Shakespeare  drew  in 
Hamlet  the  triumph  of  impulses  which  agitated 
48 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

without  dominating  his  nature."  Ibsen  had 
lived  Brand,  he  confesses  it. 

But  as  a  stage  play,  and  it  has  been  played,  it 
is  not  a  success.  It  lacks  condensation.  A  bat- 
tle-field of  two  tense  souls  —  for  Agnes's  almost 
matches  Brand's  at  times  —  it  is  too  long  and 
too  loosely  constructed  in  its  joints  for  effective 
dramatic  representation.  Dr.  Wicksteed  makes 
an  acute  point  when  he  shows  that  Einar's  smug 
conversion  —  which  fills  Brand  with  loathing  — 
is  missed  by  the  priest,  for  "  only  a  man  whose 
heart  is  dead  can  live  by  that  destroying  phrase, 
'  All  or  Nothing.'  The  principle  which  slays 
the  saintly  Agnes,  and  drives  her  heroic  hus- 
band mad,  fits  the  miserable  Einar  like  a  glove ; 
he  is  happy  and  at  home  with  it." 

Self-realization  through  self-surrender  is  the 
fundamental  organ-tone  of  the  masterly,  over- 
arching epic.  And  note  the  symbolism  of  the 
church,  the  church  in  the  valley,  and  Gerd's  Ice 
Church  !  This  symbol  of  architecture  reappears 
in  The  Master  Builder,  just  as  the  avalanche 
motive  reappears  in  When  We  Dead  Awaken. 
The  mountain-tops  are  the  abodes  of  Ibsen's 
heroes,  —  who  are  his  thoughts, — and  there  he 
scourges  the  human  soul  on  this  lofty  Inferno. 

In  Brand,  Ibsen  girded  against  the  weak- 
lings, the  men  of  half-hearted  measures,  the 
conventional  cowards  of  civilization.  In  Peer 
Gynt  he  makes  a  hero  of  such  a  one,  a  lying, 
boastful  fellow.  The  poem  is  one  of  the  most 
49 


ICONOCLASTS 

audacious  and  fantastic  ever  written.  Yet  with 
all  its  shifting  phantasmagoria,  it  so  stands  four- 
square rooted  in  the  old,  brown  earth.  Peer  is 
a  rascal,  but  a  lovable  one ;  a  liar  from  the  first 
page  to  the  last.  He  "  is  himself "  without  a 
deviation  from  the  crooked  paths  of  selfishness. 
Again  Ibsen  puzzles,  for  the  very  keystone  of 
his  ethical  arch  is  individuality.  Peer  is  a 
compromiser  at  every  station  of  his  variegated 
career.  He,  too,  treats  his  mother  cruelly, 
though  from  different  motives  from  Brand. 
He  runs  off  with  another  man's  bride,  because 
he  has  been  too  lazy  to  win  her  lawfully.  He 
does  this  in  the  face  of  a  woman,  Solveig,  for 
whom  he  has  entertained  the  first  unselfish 
desire  of  his  shallow  existence ;  he  goes  to  the 
trolls  and  lives  in  the  swamps  of  sensuality  — 
where  Solveig  follows  him,  but  is  left ;  he  goes 
to  America  after  his  mother's  death,  —  a  most 
affecting  page,  —  makes  a  fortune  by  selling 
Bibles,  rum,  and  slaves,  buys  a  yacht,  sets  up 
for  a  cosmopolitan;  "has  got  his  luck  from 
America,  his  books  from  Germany,  his  waist- 
coat and  manners  from  France,  his  industry 
and  keen  eye  for  the  main  chance  from  Eng- 
land, his  patience  from  the  Jews,  and  a  touch 
of  the  dolce  far  niente  from  the  Italians."  He 
makes  friends,  for  he  is  successful.  They 
maroon  him  on  a  savage  shore,  but  blow  up  his 
yacht.  He  thanks  God  for  the  swift  retribu- 
tion —  as  others  have  done  in  similar  predica- 
ments —  though  he  thinks  the  Lord  is  not  very 
SO 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

economical.  Many  adventures  ensue,  from  the 
episode  with  the  dancing  girl  Anitra  to  the 
crowning  in  a  madhouse  of  Peer  as  Emperor 
of  Himself. 

At  last,  old,  ruined,  he  returns  to  Norway. 
In  the  mountains,  in  the  identical  hut,  he  finds 
the  patient  Solveig,  who  has  always  loved  him. 
He  has  met  the  Button-moulder,  Death,  who  tells 
him  that  he  is  doomed  to  the  melting-pot,  there 
to  be  re-minted.  He  has  never  been  himself, 
he  the  thrice-selfish  Peer  Gynt.  His  old  thoughts 
come  back  to  him  materialized  as  balls  of  wool. 
"We  are  thoughts,"  they  cry,  "thou  shouldst 
have  thought  us ;  hands  and  feet  thou  shouldst 
have  lent  us."  So  this  scamp,  who  "  lived  his 
life  "  seemingly  to  the  utmost,  never  lived  it  at 
all,  blenches  before  the  Boyg,  the  great,  amor- 
phous mass  that  blocks  his  path,  and  listened 
to  its  whispered  "  Go  round."  He  always  skirted 
difficulties,  never  faced  them,  a  moral  coward,  a 
time-server.  Yet  he  may  escape  the  Button- 
moulder,  for  Solveig  has  believed  in  him. 
"Where  have  I  been  with  God's  stamp  on  my 
brow?"  he  asks  her,  bewildered  before  the  dawn- 
ing perception  of  his  worthlessness. 

"  In  my  faith,  in  my  hope,  in  my  love,"  she 
smilingly  answers.  The  Button-moulder  calls 
without  the  house ;  "  we  meet  at  the  last  cross- 
way,  Peer,  and  then  we  shall  see  —  I  say  no 
more."  But  Solveig  guards  him  as  he  sleeps. 

The  curse  of  Peer  Gynt  is  his  overmastering 
imagination  coupled  with  a  weak  will.  It  proves 
51 


ICONOCLASTS 

his  downfall.  "To  be  oneself,  is  to  slay  one- 
self," says  the  Button-moulder.  The  lesson  is 
the  same  as  in  Brand,  —  self-realization  through 
self-surrender.  This  parody  of  Don  Quixote 
and  Faust  was  never  the  real  Peer  Gynt  until 
the  end. 

The  musical  setting  of  Peer  Gynt  by  Eduard 
Grieg  gives  no  adequate  idea  of  the  poem's  daz- 
zling humour,  versatility,  poetic  power,  malice, 
swing,  speed,  and  tenderness.  Grieg,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  the  episode  of  Peer's 
mother's  death,  has  written  in  a  sheer  melodra- 
matic vein.  Brand  and  Peer  Gynt  brought  to 
Ibsen  the  fame  he  deserved,  though  it  was  thus 
far  confined  to  Norway. 

The  huge  double  drama,  Emperor  and  Gali- 
lean, with  the  sub-title,  a  World  Historic  Drama, 
is  in  a  theatrical  sense  one  of  Ibsen's  few  fail- 
ures, though  epical  literature  would  sadly  miss 
this  vast  and  hazardous  undertaking  devoted  to 
Caesar's  apostasy  and  the  Emperor  Julian,  all 
in  its  ten  acts.  Naturally  enough,  even  Ibsen's 
admirers  admit  that  the  work  lacks  dramatic 
unity  and  that  it  is  without  culminating  interest. 
Yet  dramatic  it  is,  this  narrative  of  Julian,  the 
so-called  Apostate,  who  conceived  the  crazy 
notion  of  dragging  from  its  grave  the  forms 
of  a  dead  and  dusty  paganism.  He  hates  the 
Galilean  and  finally  becomes  mad  enough  to 
crown  himself  a  god.  The  vivid  pictures  testify 
to  Ibsen's  powers  of  evocation,  for  it  is  said  that 
52 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

he  was  not  deeply  read  in  the  classics.  Dr. 
Emil  Reich  finds  in  Julian  something  decadent, 
a  prevision  of  the  familiar  Parisian  type  noted  by 
Huysmans.  Rather  have  Huysmans  and  Ibsen 
gone  to  ancient  Rome  for  their  figures  —  Julian 
has  a  touch  of  the  Neronic  cruelty  and  lust, 
just  as  he  has  that  monstrous  artist's  Caesarian 
madness  of  dominion. 

It  is  the  scholar  Julian  listening  to  the  teach- 
ings of  the  seer  Maximus  who  most  attracts. 
Maximus  predicts  the  advent  of  the  Third  King- 
dom, the  kingdom  which  is  neither  that  of  the 
Galilean  nor  of  the  Emperor.  It  is  an  empire 
that  will  harmonize  both  the  empire  of  pagan 
sensuality  and  the  empire  of  the  spirit  and 
bring  forth  the  empire  of  man.  That  will 
be  the  Third  Kingdom ;  "  he  is  self-begotten 
the  man  who  wills.  .  .  .  Emperor  God  —  God 
Emperor.  Emperor  in  the  kingdom  of  the 
spirit,  —  and  God  in  that  of  the  flesh."  This 
mystic  thought  recalls  that  Joachim  of  Flora, 
whose  prophecies  of  the  approaching  Third 
Kingdom  were  approved  by  the  Franciscans,  by 
that  section  which  was  called  the  Spirituals. 

There  are  some  superb  "  purple  patches  "  in 
Emperor  and  Galilean,  particularly  in  the  second 
drama.  Jealous  of  the  Redeemer,  for  he  would 
be  a  world  builder,  he  asks  Maximus  :  — 

"  Where  is  he  now  ?  What  if  that  at  Golgo- 
tha, near  Jerusalem,  was  but  a  wayside  matter,  a 
thing  done,  so  to  speak,  in  passing,  in  a  leisure 
hour  ?  What  if  he  goes  on  and  on,  and  suffers, 
53 


ICONOCLASTS 

and  dies,  and  conquers,  again  and  again,  from 
world  to  world  ?  O  that  I  could  lay  waste  the 
world  !  Maximus  —  is  there  no  poison  in  con- 
suming fire,  that  could  lay  creation  desolate,  as 
it  was  on  that  day  when  the  spirit  moved  alone 
on  the  waters?"  A  second  Alexander  this, 
not  groaning  for  more  worlds  to  conquer,  but 
eager  to  slay  the  Son  of  Man. 

Maximus  has  told  him  that,  "  You  have  tried 
to  make  the  youth  a  child  again.  The  empire 
of  the  flesh  is  swallowed  up  in  the  empire  of 
the  spirit.  But  the  empire  of  the  spirit  is  not 
final,  any  more  than  the  youth  is. 

"  You  have  tried  to  hinder  the  growth  of  the 
youth  —  to  hinder  him  from  becoming  a  man. 
O  fool,  who  have  drawn  your  sword  against 
that  which  is  to  be  —  against  the  third  empire 
in  which  the  twin-natured  shall  reign." 

After  bewailing  that  the  Galilean  will  live 
in  succeeding  centuries  to  tell  the  tale  of 
the  Emperor's  defeat,  Julian  sees  blood-red 
visions,  the  hosts  of  the  Galilean,  the  crimson 
garments  of  the  martyrs,  the  singing  women, 
and  all  the  multitudinous  sent  to  overthrow  him. 
In  the  ensuing  battle  he  dies  with  the  historic 
exclamation  upon  his  lips,  — "  Thou  hast  con- 
quered, O  Galilean ! " 

Wicksteed  points  out  that  Julian  is  a  pedant, 
not  a  prophet.  Again  we  may  see  operating  in 
another  environment  a  Peer  Gynt  on  the  throne, 
a  Skule  of  the  Pretenders.  Julian  doubted 
as  did  Skule  his  divine  call ;  he  did  not  really 
54 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

believe  in  himself,  and  under  he  went  on  his 
way  to  the  Button-moulder.  Emperor  and  Gali- 
lean has  all  the  largeness  of  an  epic  and  much 
of  that  inner  play  of  spiritual  functions  which 
may  be  seen  amplified  in  its  two  predecessors. 

The  double  drama  was  performed  for  the  first 
time  in  its  original  language  at  the  National 
Theatre,  Christiania,  March  20,  1903.  It  was 
played  in  German  in  connection  with  the  cele- 
bration of  Ibsen's  seventieth  birthday  in  Berlin 
in  1898,  and  earlier  in  1896  at  Leipsic. 


V 

THE  YOUNG  MEN'S  LEAGUE 
(1869) 

The  Young  Men's  League  is  actually  the  first 
of  the  prose  social  dramas,  though  in  Love's 
Comedy,  published  seven  years  earlier,  we  find 
the  poet  preoccupied  with  love  and  marriage. 
Politics  and  politicians  fill  the  picture,  an  ex- 
ceedingly animated  one  of  the  new  play.  Some 
critics  pretend  to  see  in  the  figure  of  Steens- 
gaard  a  burlesque  of  Bjornson,  with  whom 
about  this  time  Ibsen  had  a  quarrel.  But  this 
has  been  denied.  Steensgaard  is  the  ideal 
politician,  —  that  is,  the  politician  without  ideals. 
He  is  carried  away  by  the  sound  of  his  own 
sonorous  voice,  by  the  rumbling  of  his  own 
empty  rhetoric.  Brought  up  in  low  environ 
55 


ICONOCLASTS 

ment,  he  snobbishly  worships  all  this  as  base  and 
vulgar.  So  we  find  him  capitulating  to  the 
enemy  at  the  first  attack,  a  little  flattery,  a 
pleasant  visit  to  an  aristocratic  house,  a  peep 
at  the  daughter,  and  Steensgaard  has  changed 
his  political  skin.  He  has  so  long  misled  him- 
self that  he  misleads  others.  He  is  a  phrase- 
monger, a  parvenu,  a  turn-coat  He  is,  in  a 
word,  a  politician  all  the  world  over.  Thack- 
eray would  have  delighted  in  the  portrait  of  this 
blathering,  self-confident,  self-deceived  —  a  Peer 
Gynt  in  politics,  but  without  Peer's  brilliant 
imagination.  The  characters  grouped  about 
him  are  very  vital,  —  the  pompous  aristocrat, 
Chamberlain  Bratsberg ;  the  impressionable 
Selma ;  Monsen  the  swindler,  Bastian  and 
Ragna  his  children ;  the  shrewd  Dr.  Fjeldbo ; 
Daniel  Heire  and  Madame  Rundholmen  —  the 
latter  one  of  those  incomparably  observed 
women  of  the  lower  middle  classes  so  grateful 
to  Ibsen's  powers  of  depiction. 

When  the  comedy  was  produced,  a  scandal 
ensued.  The  dramatist  had  spared  neither  high 
nor  low.  The  piece  was  hissed  and  applauded 
until  the  authorities  interfered.  It  is  more  local 
than  any  of  the  plays,  though  some  of  the 
characters  are  sufficiently  universal  to  be  appre- 
ciated on  any  stage,  Steensgaard  the  lying  law- 
yer-politician in  particular. 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

VI 
PILLARS   OF   SOCIETY 

(1877) 

Pillars  of  Society  is  the  fifteenth  play  of  Hen- 
rik  Ibsen,  several  of  which,  among  them  Norma 
and  The  Warriors'  Tomb,  have  not  yet  been 
published.  Written  in  Munich,  it  appeared  in 
the  summer  of  1877.  The  ensuing  autumn  saw 
the  play  on  the  boards  of  nearly  all  the  Scandi- 
navian theatres ;  Germany  followed  suit  early 
the  next  year,  and  the  success  of  this  satiric  so- 
cial comedy  ran  like  wildfire  throughout  the 
continent.  It  was  not  until  December  15,  at 
the  Gaiety  Theatre,  London,  that  it  had  an 
English  hearing. 

There  is  something  of  Swift  in  its  bitter  strokes 
of  sarcasm  atthe  expense  of  the  ruling  commercial 
classes.  The  Northern  Aristophanes,  who  never 
smiles  as  he  lays  on  the  lash,  exposes  in  Pillars  of 
Society  a  varied  row  of  whited  sepulchres.  His 
attitude  is  never  that  of  Thackeray :  he  never 
seems  to  sympathize  with  his  snobs  and  hypocrites 
as  does  the  kindly  English  writer.  There  is  no 
mercy  in  Ibsen,  and  his  breast  has  never  har- 
boured the  milk  of  human  kindness.  This  re- 
mote, objective  art  does  not  throw  out  tentacles 
of  sympathy.  It  is  too  disdainful  to  make  the 
slightest  concession,  hence  the  difficulty  in  con- 
vincing an  audience  that  the  poet  is  genuinely 
human.  We  are  all  of  us  so  accustomed  to  the 
57 


ICONOCLASTS 

little  encouraging  pat  on  our  moral  hump  that 
in  the  presence  of  such  a  ruthless  unmasking 
of  our  weaknesses  we  are  apt  to  cry  aloud,  — 
"  Ibsen,  himself,  is  an  enemy  of  the  people !  " 

It  is  an  ugly,  naked  art,  an  art  unadorned  by 
poetic  halos,  lyric  interludes,  comic  reliefs,  or 
the  occasional  relaxation  by  wit  of  the  dramatic 
tension.  Love  me,  love  my  truth,  the  play- 
wright says  in  effect;  and  we  are  forced  to 
make  a  wry  face  as  we  swallow  the  nauseous  and 
unsugared  pill  he  forces  down  our  sentimental 
gullets.  His  sinews  still  taut  from  the  extraor- 
dinary labours  of  Emperor  and  Galilean,  that 
colossal  epic-drama  of  Julian  the  Apostate,  the 
Scandinavian  poet  felt  the  need  of  unbending, 
so  he  wrote  Pillars  of  Society.  It  is  the  second 
of  that  group  of  three  dramas  dealing  with 
social  and  political  themes  in  the  large,  external 
style  of  which  he  is  the  unrivalled  possessor. 
Ibsen  smelt  corruption  in  all  governments  of 
the  people  by  the  people  and  against  the  people. 
He  foresaw  that  King  Log  was  more  dangerous 
than  King  Stork.  For  him  Demos  has  ever 
been  the  most  exacting  of  tyrants,  the  true  foe 
to  individuality. 

The  student  of  social  pathology  will  find 
much  that  is  amusing  in  a  grim  sort  of  a  way 
scattered  throughout  the  scenes  of  Pillars  of 
Society.  There  is  much  action,  much  swift 
dialogue,  much  slashing  wit,  and  the  general 
atmosphere  is  of  a  more  breezy  character  than 
in  the  plays  which  follow  this  one.  Cheerful 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

it  is  not.  Surgery,  whether  of  the  body  or  the 
soul,  is  not  exactly  pleasure-breeding.  The 
story  is  not  an  involved  one,  though  Ibsen  has 
woven  a  sufficiently  complex  pattern  to  afford 
aesthetic  interest  in  its  disentanglement.  If  Con- 
sul Bernick  had  not  been  in  need  of  money,  he 
would  not  have  married  his  meek  wife,  Betty,  to 
whose  elder  half-sister  he  had  previously  pledged 
his  faith.  As  a  pillar  of  society  in  a  thriving 
community,  as  the  pillar  of  its  church  and  com- 
merce, Bernick  could  never  afford  to  be  caught 
napping.  Once  it  had  nearly  happened.  He 
had  carried  on  an  illicit  love  affair  with  a  French 
actress.  Her  husband  surprised  the  pair.  Ber- 
nick contrived  an  escape.  So  his  brother-in- 
law,  who  had  slipped  away  to  America,  was 
blamed  for  the  scandal,  and  you  may  easily 
imagine  the  tongue-wagging  and  head-nodding 
in  this  philistine  town. 

It  seems  that  Ibsen  levelled  his  shafts  at  a 
species  of  social  hypocrisy  peculiar  to  his  native 
land.  Here  in  America,  where  all  is  fair  and 
naught  is  foul,  his  satire  falls  short  of  its  mark, 
for  our  target  is  clean,  and  our  sepulchres  are 
unwhited !  Probably  this  optimistic  sense  of 
being  different  —  and  better  than  our  neigh- 
bours —  fills  us  with  satisfaction  in  the  pres- 
ence of  an  Ibsen  play.  Strangely  enough  the 
people  in  this  very  drama  entertain  identical 
opinions  on  the  subject  of  their  American 
brethren !  Perhaps  Pillars  of  Society  is  not  so 
provincial  in  its  character-painting  as  some  of 
59 


ICONOCLASTS 

Ibsen's  critics  have  imagined.  Perhaps  his  shoe 
fits! 

The  return  of  the  supposed  fugitive  Johan, 
Bernick's  scapegoat  brother-in-law,  finds  the 
Consul  beloved  and  respected  by  his  fellow- 
citizens.  He  has  educated  in  his  own  house- 
hold Dina  Dorf,  the  daughter  of  that  French 
actress  with  whom  years  before  he  had  seen 
merry  days  —  that  is,  if  there  is  really  any  joy 
of  life  in  those  dull,  drab  Norwegian  commu- 
nities. With  Johan  returns  Lona  Hessel,  the 
elderly  sister-in-law.  The  Bernick  household  is 
dismayed  at  this  rude  invasion  of  the  "  Ameri- 
cans," and  the  tragi-comedy  begins  in  earnest. 
Bernick  has  not  improved  with  the  years.  He 
has  become  more  grasping  for  wealth  and  power. 
He  even  conceives  the  idea  of  sending  to  sea 
an  untrustworthy  ship.  Its  rotten  hulk  almost 
carries  off  his  young  son,  while  the  father 
imagines  that  the  unwelcome  visitors,  Johan 
and  Lona,  are  on  board.  To  complicate  matters, 
Dina,  sick  of  the  false  odour  of  sanctity  in  the 
home  of  Bernick,  loves  Johan,  and  to  the  infinite 
scandal  of  every  one  she  speaks  out  her  mind. 
She  will  go  to  America,  where  people  are  not  so 
good  —  alas  !  Ibsen  didn't  know  that  our  na- 
tional goodness  is  becoming  as  a  rank,  threaten- 
ing vegetation  upon  the  body  politic. 

Furthermore  Bernick,  so  as  to  make  himself 

pose  as  a  self-sacrificing,  deeply  injured   man, 

has  insinuated  that  Johan  was  an  embezzler  as 

well  as   an   immoral  man.      About  the    figure 

60 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

of  the  Consul  there  cluster  several  admirable 
hypocrites :  Rector  Rorlund,  who  keeps  Ber- 
nick  upon  his  pinnacle  of  self-righteousness ; 
Hilmar  Tonnessen,  who  goes  about  sniffing  out 
other  people's  soul  maladies  and  carrying  with 
peevish  pride  the  "banner  of  the  ideal";  and 
several  merchants,  who  are  in  with  the  Consul 
whenever  a  "deal,"  public  or  private,  is  pos- 
sible. The  minor  characters,  the  women  in 
particular,  are  individually  outlined  from  the 
shipbuilder  Aune,  with  his  sturdy  adherence  to 
the  interests  of  the  Bernick  house  and  his  weak- 
kneed  code  of  morals,  to  the  veriest  sketch  of 
a  clerk  —  all  are  human,  brimming  over  with 
selfish  humanity. 

The  catastrophe  is  led  up  to  with  a  masterly 
gradation  of  incident.  Confronted  by  Lona 
when  in  his  darkest  hour  of  despair  and  need, 
Bernick  has  the  lying  garments  in  which  he 
invests  himself  for  his  family  and  friends  torn 
away  by  the  fearless  words  of  Lona.  She  does 
not  accuse  him  of  committing  the  one  unfor- 
givable, biblical  sin  which  Ella  Rentheim 
throws  at  the  desperate  head  of  John  Gabriel 
Borkman.  No,  Lona  does  not  say,  "  You  slew 
the  love  that  was  in  me ; "  she  tears  up  two 
incriminating  letters,  she  declares  that  with 
Johan  and  Dina  she  will  return  to  America ; 
but  —  but  Bernick  must  escape  from  the  cage 
of  lies  in  which,  like  a  monstrous  master-spider, 
he  has  been  spinning  a  network  of  falsehoods 
for  the  world.  He  groans  out  that  it  is  too  late, 
61 


ICONOCLASTS 

that  he  must  "  sink  along  with  the  whole  of  the 
bungled  social  system"  —  he  is  not  the  first, 
nor  the  last  man,  who  has  attempted  to  shift 
upon  society  his  individual  sins.  He  calls  him- 
self the  tool,  not  the  pillar,  of  society,  and  you 
seem  to  see,  as  he  talks,  the  plaster  flaking  off 
in  great  patches,  and  the  ugly  stains  coming 
into  view. 

A  grand  demonstration  by  the  town  is  made  : 
torchlight,  music,  speeches,  a  presentation,  and 
all  the  rest  of  the  cheap,  vain  humbug  of  which 
we  all  disapprove  so  heartily  in  America  —  and 
indulge  in  it  about  once  every  hour.  Bernick 
tells  the  truth,  confesses  that  he  is  the  real 
sinner,  not  Johan,  and  shocks  his  world  immeas- 
urably, especially  the  priggish  Rorlund.  That 
worthy  rector,  who  would  marry  Dina  in  a 
pitying,  pardoning  way,  is  flouted  by  her.  She 
leaves  with  Johan.  Then,  it  may  be  confessed, 
there  is  a  flat,  conventional  conclusion,  "  docked 
of  its  natural,  tragic  ending,"  as  Allan  Monk- 
house  truthfully  declares.  Bernick  is  in  reality 
re-whitewashed  at  the  close  of  this  powerful, 
picturesque  play. 

One  feels  instinctively  that  more  could  be 
done  with  Lona  and  Bernick,  more  utilized 
from  the  strong  scenes  between  Aune  and  Ber- 
nick. But  in  John  Gabriel  Borkman,  Ibsen 
later  realized  the  wicked  grandeur  inherent  in 
the  character  of  a  tremendous  financial  scoun- 
drel ;  like  Balzac's  Mercadet,  his  Borkman  is  a 
figure  hewn  from  the  native  rock.  Bernick  is 
62 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

a  man  you  may  meet  in  Wall  Street,  and  cer- 
tainly on  any  Sunday  in  any  given  church  you 
enter.  He  is  proud,  pious,  fat  as  to  paunch, 
and  lean-souled ;  and  he  drives  a  hard  bargain 
with  God,  man,  and  devil.  In  a  word,  the  aver- 
age pillar  of  any  society,  one  who  believes  in 
making  religion  and  patriotism  pay ;  a  good 
father,  a  good  husband,  a  good  fellow,  is  the 
inscription  chiselled  on  his  marble  mortuary 
shaft  —  and  then  the  worms  stop  to  smile  archly 
at  their  eternal  banquet!  Truth  is  always  at 
the  bottom  of  a  grave.  And  Ibsen  is  a  terrible 
digger  of  graves  when  he  so  wills  it. 

As  a  matter  of  record  it  would  not  be  amiss 
to  state  that  Pillars  of  Society,  written  in  1877, 
was  produced  in  America  at  the  Irving  Place 
Theatre,  December  26,  1889,  with  Ernest  Pos- 
sart  as  Bernick,  Frau  Christien  as  Mrs.  Bernick, 
and  Frl.  Leithner  as  Lona.  In  English  it  was 
first  heard  at  the  Lyceum  Theatre,  March  6, 
1891,  with  George  W.  Fawcett  as  Bernick,  Alice 
Fischer  as  Lona,  and  Dina  Dorf  played  by 
Bessie  Tyree.  There  was  a  third  performance 
at  Hammerstein's  Opera  House  three  days 
later.  Wilton  Lackaye  and  his  company  re- 
vived the  piece  at  the  Lyric  Theatre,  New 
York,  April  15,  1904. 


ICONOCLASTS 

VII 
A  DOLL'S   HOUSE 


Ibsen  has  been  persistently  confounded  with 
those  mannish  women  who,  averse  from  mar- 
riage, furiously  denounce  it  as  a  tyrannical  insti- 
tution. Strindberg,  who  was  half  mad  at  the 
time,  accused  the  Norwegian  poet  of  being  a 
woman's  rights  advocate.  Dr.  Brandes  has  told 
us  the  contrary.  Ibsen  was  never  a  woman's 
man  ;  he  did  not  like  women's  society,  prefer- 
ring men's.  He  did  not  admire  John  Stuart 
Mill's  book  on  the  woman  question,  and  enter- 
tained an  antipathy  for  those  writers  who  de- 
clare, gallantly  enough,  that  they  owe  much  in 
their  books  to  their  wives.  A  sheer  sense  of 
justice  impelled  him  to  view  the  institution  of 
matrimony  as  not  always  being  made  above. 
A  woman  is  an  individual.  She  has,  there- 
fore, her  rights,  not  alone  because  of  her  sex,  but 
because  she  is  a  human  being.  So  he  wrote 
A  Doll's  House  to  show  a  woman's  soul  in  trav- 
ail beset  by  obstacles  of  her  own  and  others' 
making. 

Thoroughly  he  accomplished  his  task.  Nora 
Helmer,  a  lark-like  creature  in  Act  I,  grows  be- 
fore our  eyes  from  scene  to  scene  until,  at  the 
fall  of  the  curtain,  she  is  another  woman.  In 
few  dramas  has  there  been  such  a  continuous 
64 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

growth.  The  play  seems  a  trifle  outmoded  to- 
day, not  because  its  main  problem  will  ever 
grow  stale,  but  because  of  the  many  and  con- 
flicting meanings  read  into  it  by  apostles  of 
feminine  supremacy.  Ibsen  declared  in  one  of 
his  few  public  speeches  that  he  had  no  intention 
of  representing  the  conventional,  emancipated 
woman. 

It  is  Nora  as  an  individual  cheated  of  her  true 
rights  that  the  dramatist  depicts,  for  her  mar- 
riage, as  she  discovers  in  the  crisis,  has  been 
merely  material  and  not  that  spiritual  tie  Ibsen 
insists  upon  as  the  only  happy  one  in  this  rela- 
tion. So  she  goes  away  to  find  herself,  and  her 
going  was  the  signal  for  almost  a  social  war  in 
Europe.  His  critics  forgot  that  Ibsen  was  a 
skilled  deviser  of  theatric  effects,  and  such  an 
unconventional  exit  was  not  without  its  artistic 
values.  This  does  not  mean  that  he  was  insin- 
cere—  Nora's  departure  is  a  logical  necessity. 
Without  it  the  play  would  be  sheer  sentimental, 
and  therefore  banal,  nonsense.  Nevertheless, 
that  slammed  door  reverberated  across  the  roof 
of  the  world,  and  not  over  the  knocking  at  the 
gate  in  Macbeth  was  there  such  critical  con- 
troversy. 

One  finds  Nora  Helmer  a  fascinating  type  of 
womanhood  to  study.  To  be  sure,  she  is  not 
new  —  neither  is  Mother  Eve,  but  can  we  ponder 
the  apple  story  too  often  or  unprofitably  ?  This 
Scandinavian  Frou-Frou,  bursting  with  joy  of 
life,  is  confronted  with  a  grave  problem,  and  as 
65 


ICONOCLASTS 

she  has  been  brought  up  perfectly  irresponsible 
and  a  doll,  she  solves  the  problem  in  an  irrespon- 
sible manner.  She  commits  forgery,  believing 
that  the  end  justified  the  means,  and  you  per- 
force sympathize  with  her  as  her  act  brought 
good,  not  evil  —  rather  would  not  have  brought 
evil  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  evil  mind  of 
Krogstad. 

After  the  awakening  Nora  resolves  to  go 
away  —  away  from  husband,  home,  and  children. 
That  such  a  revulsion  should  occur  in  the  nature 
of  a  gadabout  and  featherbrain  like  this  girl,  is 
not  unnatural.  Now  Torvald  is  not  a  bad  man. 
On  the  contrary,  he  is  what  the  world  calls  a 
good  man,  and  he  is  an  insufferably  selfish, 
priggish  bore  into  the  bargain.  Nora  knew 
that  when  she  left  him  "the  miracle  of  mira- 
cles" would  never  occur  —  that  the  leopard  does 
not  change  his  spots.  The  end  of  this  human 
fugue,  so  full  of  passion  and  vitality,  contains 
some  of  the  strongest  lines  Ibsen  penned.  Nora 
is  such  a  volatile,  gay,  frivolous,  restless,  per- 
verse, affectionate,  womanly,  childish,  loving, 
and  desperate  creature,  that  we  hardly  marvel 
at  both  her  husband  and  her  father  petting  her 
like  a  doll.  The  awakening  was  severe,  and 
Torvald  suffered,  and  it  served  him  quite  right. 
Dr.  Rank  forms  "  a  cloudy  background  "  to  the 
happiness  of  the  Helmer  household.  He  is 
very  interesting,  with  his  cynicism  and  tragic 
resolves  and  passion.  But  he  serves  his  pur- 
pose in  indicating  certain  things  to  Nora.  He 
66 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

first  suggests,  unconsciously,  to  her  the  thought 
of  suicide,  for  Krogstad  discovers  this  thought 
lurking  in  her  mind  at  his  second  visit  and  just 
after  Dr.  Rank  has  made  his  confession  of  love 
to  her.  As  for  Krogstad,  he  is  only  a  man  of 
mixed  impulses.  He  could  have  been  a  decent 
member  of  society ;  indeed,  he  tried  hard  to  be. 
The  unfortunate  entrance  into  the  Helmer 
family  life  of  Mrs.  Linden  upset  all  of  his  cal- 
culations, and  he  became  a  blackmailer  in  con- 
sequence. 

The  afternoon  of  February  15,  1894,  Mrs. 
Fiske  played  Nora  in  A  Doll's  House  at  the 
Empire  Theatre.  It  was  a  benefit  performance. 
Her  support  was  unusually  strong;  W.  H. 
Thompson,  the  Krogstad,  won  critical  admira- 
tion for  the  manner  in  which  he  suggested 
the  shades  of  a  character  whose  possibilities 
for  good  and  evil  are  perplexingly  interwoven. 
Mrs.  Fiske  was,  however,  the  surprise  of  the 
day.  Shedding  her  Frou-Frou  skin,  she  sounded 
every  note  on  the  keyboard  of  Nora  Helmer's 
character.  She  was  bird-like,  evasive,  frankly 
selfish,  boiling  with  material  enthusiasms,  a  crea- 
ture of  air,  fire,  caprice,  gayety,  and  bitterness. 
Excepting  Agnes  Sorma  no  one  has  indicated 
with  such  finesse  of  modulation  the  awakened 
moral  nature  of  the  woman.  And  it  is  to  be 
doubted  if  Mrs.  Fiske  ever  bettered  that  first 
rapturous  interpretation. 

The  ending  is  an  unresolved  cadence,  though 
to  the  ear  attuned  to  the  finer  spiritual  harmonies 
67 


ICONOCLASTS 

it  is  not  difficult  to  discern  that  the  wife  will 
suffer  and  grow  —  and  be  herself.  But  the 
children,  cries  the  world !  Ibsen,  who  has  proved 
his  love  for  the  little  ones,  answers  the  question 
by  another.  Read  Ghosts,  and  you  will  see 
what  might  have  become  of  the  Helmer  children 
if  Nora  had  stayed  at  home  and  continued  in  her 
life-lie. 

As  an  acting  r61e  Nora  has  won  the  suffrages 
of  such  artists  as  Betty  Hennings,  Agnes  Sorma, 
Helene  Odilon,  Gabrielle  R^jane,  Friederike 
Gossmann,  Lilly  Petri,  Modjeska,  Mrs.  Fiske, 
Irene  Triesch,  Hilda  Borgstrb'm  (a  great  Hilda 
Wangel),  Stella  Hohenfels,  and  Eleonore  Duse. 

Henrik  Ibsen  once  attended  a  dinner  given  in 
his  honour  by  the  Ladies'  Club  of  Christiania, 
and  made  a  speech  about  himself  in  answer  to 
a  toast.  Miss  Osina  Krog,  in  proposing  Ibsen's 
health,  spoke  of  him  as  a  poet  who  had  done 
much  for  woman  through  his  works.  Dr.  Ibsen's 
reply  was  this:  — 

All  that  I  have  composed  has  not  proceeded  from 
a  conscious  tendency.  I  have  been  more  the  poet 
and  less  the  social  philosopher  than  has  been  be- 
lieved. I  have  never  regarded  the  women's  cause 
as  a  question  in  itself,  but  as  a  question  of  man- 
kind, not  of  women.  It  is  most  certainly  desirable 
to  solve  the  woman  question  among  others,  but  that 
was  not  the  whole  intention.  My  task  was  the  de- 
scription of  man.  Is  it  to  some  extent  true  that  the 
reader  weaves  his  own  feelings  and  sentiments  in 
with  what  he  reads  and  that  they  are  attributed  to  the 
68 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

poet  ?  Not  alone  those  who  write,  but  also  those  who 
read,  compose,  and  very  often  they  are  more  full  of 
poetry  than  the  poet  himself.  I  take  the  liberty  to 
thank  you  for  the  toast,  with  a  modification,  for  I  see 
that  women  have  a  great  task  before  them  in  the 
field  for  which  this  ladies'  association  works.  I 
drink  the  health  of  the  club  and  wish  it  happiness 
and  success. 

I  have  always  regarded  it  as  my  task  to  raise  the 
country  and  to  give  the  people  a  higher  position.  In 
this  work  two  factors  assert  themselves.  It  is  for 
the  mothers  to  awake,  by  slow  and  intense  work,  a 
conscious  feeling  of  culture  and  discipline.  This 
feeling  must  be  awakened  in  individuals  before  one 
can  elevate  a  people.  The  women  will  solve  the 
question  of  mankind,  but  they  must  do  so  as  mothers. 
Herein  lies  the  great  task  of  women. 

And  this  speech  quite  dissipates  the  notion  that 
Ibsen  had  affiliations  with  the  Feminists. 


VIII 
GHOSTS 

(1881) 

Following  the  scandal  created  by  the  first  per- 
formance of  A  Doll's  House,  Ghosts  seemed  like 
a  deliberate  affront  to  his  critics,  a  gauntlet  hurled 
into  their  faces  by  the  sturdy  arm  of  Dr.  Ibsen. 
Now,  he  said,  in  effect,  —  though  he  has  nevei 
condescended  to  pulpit  polemics  or  caf6  aes- 
thetics, —  here  is  a  wife  who  resolves  to  endure 
69 


ICONOCLASTS 

who  stays  at  home  and  bears  that  burden.  Nora 
Helmer  refused!  Behold  Mrs.  Alving,  the 
womanly  woman,  good  housewife  —  malgrJ  elle 
meme  —  and  good  mother ! 

Ghosts,  like  much  that  is  great  in  art,  is  a  very 
painful  play.  So  is  Macbeth,  so  is  Lear,  so  is 
CEdipus  Rex.  There  are  some  painful  pictures 
in  the  small  gallery  of  the  world  s  greatest  art, 
and  in  music  analogous  examples  are  not  want- 
ing. Probably  the  most  poignant  emotional 
music  thus  far  written  is  to  be  found  in  the  last 
movement  of  Tschaikowsky's  Pathetic  Sym- 
phony. It  is  cosmic  in  its  hopeless  woe.  Yet 
Ibsen  gives  the  screw  a  tighter  wrench,  for  he 
conceived  the  idea  of  transposing  all  the  horror 
of  the  antique  drama  to  the  canvas  of  contem- 
porary middle-class  life. 

He  gives  us  an  Orestes  in  a  smoking  jacket, 
the  Furies  within  the  walls  of  his  crumbling 
brain.  Naturally  the  academic  critics  cry  aloud 
at  the  blasphemy.  The  ancients,  Racine,  Shake- 
speare, and  the  rest,  softened  their  tragic  situa- 
tions by  great  art.  As  in  a  vast  mirror  the  souls  of 
the  obsessed  pass  in  solemn,  processional  atti- 
tudes ;  the  contours  are  blurred ;  the  legend  goes 
up  to  the  heavens  in  exquisite  empurpled  haze. 

"  Very  well,"  grumbles  in  answer  the  terrible 
old  man  from  Norway,  "  I'll  give  you  a  new 
(Bsthetik.  Art  in  old  times  is  at  two  removes 
from  life.  I'll  place  it  at  one.  I'll  banish  its 
opiates,  its  comic  reliefs,  all  its  conventions  that 
.mellow  and  anaestheticize." 
70 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

Then  he  wrote  Ghosts.  It  is  terrible.  The 
Orestean  Furies  are  localized.  They  are  no 
longer  poetic  and  pictorial  abstractions,  but  a 
disease.  So  you  can  accept  the  thesis  or  leave 
it.  One  thing  you  cannot  do  :  you  cannot  be 
indifferent;  and  therein  lies  one  secret  of  Ibsen's 
power.  It  is  his  aloofness  that  his  audiences 
resent  the  most  of  all.  If,  like  another  master 
showman,  Thackeray,  Ibsen  would  occasionally 
put  his  tongue  in  his  cheek,  or  wink  his  eye  in 
an  aside,  or  whisper  that  the  story  was  only 
make-believe  —  there,  dear  ones,  don't  run  away 
—  why,  the  Ibsen  play  might  not  be  avoided  as 
if  it  were  the  pest.  But  there  are  no  concessions 
made,  and  the  sense  of  reality  is  tremendous  and 
often  nerve-shocking. 

The  blemishes  in  Ghosts  are  few,  yet  they  are 
in  full  view.  That  fire  is  our  old  friend,  "  the 
long  arm  of  coincidence."  And  what  pastor  of 
any  congregation,  anywhere,  could  have  been 
such  a  doddering  old  imbecile  as  Manders  with 
his  hatred  of  insurance  ?  Possibly  he  represents 
a  type  of  evangelical  and  very  parochial  clergy- 
man, but  a  type,  we  hope,  long  since  obsolete.  It 
is  not  well,  either,  to  pry  deeply  into  the  sources 
of  Oswald's  insanity.  Thus  far  it  has  not  been 
accurately  diagnosed.  Let  us  accept  it  with 
other  unavoidable  conventions.  The  pity  about 
Ghosts,  which  is  in  the  repertory  of  every  con- 
tinental theatre,  is  that  the  Ibsenites  made  of  it 
a  stalking  horse  for  all  kinds  of  vagaries,  from 
free  love  to  eating  turnips  raw. 
71 


ICONOCLASTS 

Ibsen  holds  no  brief  for  free  love,  or  for 
diseased  mental  states.  You  may  applaud  Mrs. 
Alving,  you  may  loathe  her;  either  way  it  is  a 
matter  of  no  import  to  this  writer.  To  call 
Ghosts  immoral  is  a  silly  and  an  illogical  pro- 
ceeding, for  it  is,  if  it  is  anything  at  all  within 
the  domain  of  morals,  a  dramatic  setting  of  the 
biblical  wisdom  that  the  sins  of  the  fathers  are 
visited  upon  the  children.  This  may  be  pure 
pathology;  in  Ibsen's  hands  it  is  a  drama  of 
terrible  intensity. 

Ghosts  is  a  very  simple  but  painful  story. 
The  dissolute  Captain  Alving,  the  father  of 
Oswald,  dies  of  his  debaucheries  before  the  play 
begins.  His  wife,  the  mother  of  Oswald,  has 
believed  it  her  bounden  duty  to  hide  from  the 
world  the  cancer  which  is  eating  up  her  family 
life.  She  partially  succeeds,  and  only  when  he 
brings  shame  to  her  very  door  does  she  weaken 
and  fly  to  Pastor  Manders,  whom  she  once 
loved,  and  who  presumably  loves  her.  This 
worthy  clergyman  does  only  what  his  ideals 
have  taught  him.  He  refuses  her  refuge  and 
sends  her  back  to  her  husband,  admonishing  her 
that  her  duty  is  to  accept  the  cross  which  God 
has  imposed  upon  her  and  to  reclaim  her  hus- 
band. Frozen  up  in  heart  and  soul,  Mrs.  Alving 
begins  a  long  fight  with  the  beasts  of  appetite 
which  rule  her  husband's  nature.  She  sends 
away  her  son  Oswald,  she  even  adopts  a  bastard 
daughter  of  her  husband's,  and  marries  off  the 
mother  —  a  servant  in  her  employ  —  to  a  car- 
72 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

penter,  Jacob  Engstrand  by  name.  The  girl 
grows  up  to  womanhood;  Oswald,  her  son,  be- 
comes a  painter  and  lives  in  Paris.  Captain 
Alving  dies  a  miserable  death,  his  vices  a  secret 
to  all  but  a  few,  while  his  widow  seeks  a  salve 
for  her  conscience  by  erecting  with  his  money 
an  orphanage.  Naturally  Pastor  Manders  takes 
much  interest  in  this  scheme,  and  when  he  meets 
Oswald  fresh  from  Paris,  he  is  struck  by  the  re- 
semblance the  morbid,  sickly-looking  youth  bears 
to  his  dead  father. 

But  all  has  not  been  well  with  the  young  man. 
He  has  been  told  by  a  famous  alienist  in  Paris 
that  his  days  of  sanity  are  numbered,  and  he  is 
at  a  loss  to  conjecture  why  such  a  curse  should 
be  visited  upon  him.  He  always  heard  of  his 
father's  greatness  and  goodness.  I  know  of  few 
more  touching  scenes  than  the  conversation  be- 
tween mother  and  son,  and  the  horrible  confes- 
sion which  follows.  It  is  like  a  blast  from  a 
charnel  house ;  but  then,  what  power,  what 
lucidity  !  The  poor,  tortured  mother  unburthens 
her  heart  to  her  pastor,  and  of  course  receives 
scant  consolation.  How  could  he,  according 
to  his  lights,  treat  her  otherwise  than  he  did  ? 
Manders  is  a  type,  and  he  always  faces  the  past; 
Mrs.  Alving  looks  toward  the  west  for  the  glim- 
mer of  the  new  light.  Alas,  it  comes  not !  She 
only  hears  her  son  crying  aloud,  "  Give  me  wine, 
mother!"  It  is  the  spiritual  battle  of  the  old 
and  new.  And  the  old  order  is  changing. 

Worse  follows.  The  boy  falls  in  love  with 
73 


ICONOCLASTS 

Regina,  his  half-sister,  as  to  whose  identity  he  is 
in  absolute  darkness,  for  she  has  been  brought 
up  as  a  maid  in  his  mother's  house.  But  with 
his  mind  weakening  he  clutches  at  this  straw 
to  help  him.  "  Isn't  she  splendid,  mother  ? " 
he  says,  admiring  the  girl's  superb  animal  de- 
velopment, and  we  can  easily  conjecture  the 
agony  of  his  mother.  Weak  she  must  appear  in 
the  pastor's  eyes,  for  she  almost  hesitates  about 
revealing  the  birth  of  Regina,  and  wavers  on  the 
question  of  Oswald  marrying  her.  She  has 
been  too  indulgent  to  the  boy,  and  Manders 
does  not  scruple  to  tell  her  so.  He  is  one 
of  your  iron-minded  men  who  have  a  rigid 
sense  of  what  is  right  and  wrong,  and  one  who 
would  have  no  sympathy  with  fluttering  souls 
like  Amiel,  Lamenais,  Clough,  or  any  of  the 
spiritual  band  to  whom  dogmas  are  as  steel 
clamps.  Mr.  Manders  is  outraged  at  Mrs. 
Alving,  and  proposes  sending  Regina  away, 
but  where  ?  To  her  father,  Jacob  Engstrand, 
a  cunning,  low,  hypocritical  rascal  ?  No,  he 
is  not  her  real  father.  At  the  end  of  the  first 
act  both  overhear  Oswald  trying  to  kiss  Regina 
in  the  dining  room,  and  another  such  scene,  in 
which  Captain  Alving  and  Regina's  mother 
were  the  actors,  flashes  before  her,  and  she 
cries  "  Ghosts !  "  as  the  curtain  falls. 

Everything  then  goes  wrong.     The  Alving 
orphanage    burns    down,  and    there  is  no  in- 
surance  because  Pastor  Mander  believes  that 
insuring   a   consecrated    building    against    fire 
74 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

would  be  questioning  Providence.  But  his 
human  respect  plays  him  into  the  hands  of 
Jacob  Engstrand,  whose  cunning  is  more  than 
a  match  for  the  worthy  priest.  The  dialogue 
between  these  two  widely  varying  types  is  a 
masterpiece. 

Mrs.  Alving  is  at  last  goaded  into  telling  Os- 
wald and  Regina  of  their  blood  relationship, 
and  the  girl,  who  is  a  bad,  selfish  lot,  goes 
away  —  deserts  the  family  at  the  most  critical 
period.  She  upbraids  Mrs.  Alving  for  not 
having  told  her  of  her  true  station  in  life,  and 
turns  her  back  on  the  poor  mumbling  wretch 
Oswald.  She  then  walks  off  defiantly  and  to 
her  putative  father's  home,  a  sailors'  dance 
house.  Oswald's  mind  is  completely  unhinged 
by  this  denouement,  and  he  confides  to  his 
mother  in  stuttering,  stammering  accents  — 
the  sure  forerunner  of  the  crumbling  brain 
within  —  that  he  has  some  poison  to  kill  him- 
self with ;  that  he  had  relied  on  Regina  to  do  it 
when  he  would  be  an  absolute  idiot;  but,  as 
Regina  was  at  hand  no  longer,  his  mother  must 
play  the  executioner. 

The  end  is  as  relentless  as  a  Greek  tragedy. 
The  boy  chases  his  mother  from  room  to  room 
imploring  and  screaming  at  her  to  rid  him  of 
his  pain ;  as  she  brought  him  into  life  without 
his  consent,  so  should  she  send  him  forth  from 
it  when  he  bade  her.  It  is  all  frightful,  but 
enthralling.  When  Oswald  cries  aloud  for  the 
sun,  the  end  has  been  reached.  He  is  a  hap- 
75 


ICONOCLASTS 

less  lunatic,  and  his  wretched,  half-crazed  mother, 
remembering  her  promise  to  him,  searches  fran- 
tically in  his  pocket  for  the  morphine,  and  then 
a  merciful  curtain  bars  out  from  further  view 
the  finale.  If  Ibsen's  scalpel  digs  down  too 
deep  and  jars  some  hidden  and  diseased  nerves, 
what  shall  we  say  ?  Rather  can  he  not  turn 
upon  us  and  cry,  "  I  but  hold  the  mirror  up 
to  nature ;  behold  yourselves  in  all  your  naked- 
ness, in  all  your  corruption  !  "  Anatole  France 
once  wrote,  "  If  the  will  of  those  who  are  no 
more  is  to  be  imposed  on  those  who  still  are, 
it  is  the  dead  who  live,  and  the  live  men  who 
become  the  dead  ones."  And  this  idea  is  the 
motive  of  Ghosts. 

IX 

AN   ENEMY  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

(1882) 

Ibsen  was  called  such  hard  names  when 
Ghosts  was  produced  that  William  Archer  made 
a  collection  of  all  the  epithets  hurled  at  the 
dramatist's  head  and  published  them  in  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette  with  the  title  Ghosts  and  Gibber- 
ings.  Of  course  the  Norwegian  was  indignant 
that  his  play  should  have  been  so  grossly  mis- 
understood, and  in  An  Enemy  of  the  People 
he  undertook  to  show  that  the  reformer  —  the 
true  pioneer  —  is  always  abused  and  pilloried 
as  a  dangerous  foe  to  society,  and  that  the 
76 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

majority  is  always  in  the  wrong.  It  is  merely 
a  case  of  Horace's  odi  profanum  vulgus  over 
again.  But  how  did  the  playwright  go  about 
his  task?  Did  he  paint  for  us  another  Ajax 
defying  the  social  lightning  ?  Did  he  give  us 
a  modern  Coriolanus  ?  With  his  usual  ideal- 
demolishing  propensities  this  terrible  old  man 
makes  his  hero  a  fussy  doctor  —  a  man  of  the 
middle  classes ;  a  man  who  forgets  the  names 
of  the  servant  girls  ;  a  man  who  loves  to  see 
his  children  feed  on  roast  beef ;  a  man  who  is 
economical  in  little  things ;  a  thorough  profes- 
sional gentleman,  who  explodes,  fusses,  fumes, 
fidgets,  goes  off  continually  at  half  cock;  a 
crack-brained  enthusiast,  a  fanatic,  and  a  teller 
of  disagreeable  truths.  But  this  doctrinaire  with 
torn  trousers  is  a  mighty  fellow  after  all,  and 
by  the  supreme  genius  of  his  creator  has  quite 
as  much  right  to  live  as  any  Homeric  hero. 
Vitality  is  the  most  masterful  test  of  a  drama- 
tist's characters;  their  vitality  is  their  excuse 
for  being.  Every  figure  in  An  Enemy  of  the 
People  is  brimming  with  vitality,  from  the 
drunken  man  to  Dr.  Stockmann.  Of  course 
you  can  hardly  be  expected  to  take  an  over- 
weening interest  in  the  condition  of  the  water 
pipes  in  that  little  town  on  the  south  coast  of 
Norway.  What  are  water  pipes  to  Hecuba  ? 
Yet  a  world  of  principle  is  involved  in  these 
same  germ-breeding  conduits,  and  the  crafty 
dramatist  has,  while  apparently  depicting  local 
types,  contrived  to  paint  a  large  canvas.  Have 
77 


ICONOCLASTS 

we  not  our  Burgomaster  Stockmanns,  our  Edi- 
tor Hovstads,  our  timid  meliorists  like  Aslaken, 
and  our  fire-eating  Billings  ?  Men,  men  all  of 
them. 

What  a  daring  thing  it  was  to  write  a  play 
without  a  love  scene,  a  play  which  is  more  like 
life  than  all  the  sensualistic  caterwaulings,  phi- 
landerings,  and  bosh  and  glitter  of  the  conven- 
tional stage,  which  we  fondly  fancy  holds  the 
mirror  up  to  nature !  I  have  before  dwelt  on 
the  frugality  of  his  phrases,  of  the  delicacy  and 
concise  cleaving  power  of  his  dialogues.  He 
has  broken  with  the  convention  of  monologues, 
of  mechanical  exits  —  indeed,  of  everything 
which  savours  of  old-time  stage  artifice.  His  acts 
terminate  naturally,  yet  are  pregnant  with  pos- 
sibilities. You  impatiently  wait  for  the  next 
scene,  and  all  because  a  lot  of  nobodies  in  an 
out-of-the-way  Norwegian  health  resort  fight 
a  man  who  is  crazy  to  tell  the  truth  —  and  ruin 
the  place.  But  they  are  human  beings  even  if 
they  strut  not  in  doublets  and  hose,  and  pour 
not  out  perfumed  passion  to  the  damosel  on  the 
balcony. 

One  cannot  sympathize  much  with  Dr.  Stock- 
mann.  He,  while  being  "  the  strongest  man  on 
earth,"  brought  a  calamity  on  his  native  place  by 
his  awful  propensity  for  blabbing  out  the  truth. 
Besides,  Ibsen  leaves  us  just  a  margin  of  doubt 
in  the  matter.  Perhaps  the  worthy  medical 
man  was  not  correct  in  his  diagnosis  of  the 
waters,  and  if  this  were  so  his  conduct  was  inex- 
78 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

cusable.  But  he  fought  for  that  most  danger 
ous  of  ideals,  — the  truth,  even  though  he  flaunts 
in  the  face  of  the  mob  the  fact  that  "  a  normally 
constituted  truth  lives,  let  me  say  as  a  rule, 
seventeen  or  eighteen  years :  at  the  outside 
twenty ;  seldom  longer." 

One  recalls  Matthew  Arnold's  lecture  on 
Numbers,  in  which  that  essayist  preached  the 
evils  of  majority.  Ibsen  hits  at  democracy  when 
he  can  —  for  him  the  mass  of  the  people  is 
led  by  the  few.  An  Enemy  of  the  People  is  an 
excellent  repertory  piece,  though  one  feels  the 
moral  stress  too  strongly  in  it. 


THE  WILD   DUCK 

(1884) 

The  Wild  Duck  followed  An  Enemy  of  the 
People  and  preceded  Rosmersholm,  and  is 
linked  by  similar  inner  motives,  so  these  plays 
really  can  be  grouped  as  a  trilogy.  Stock- 
mann,  the  energetic  denouncer  of  public  dis- 
honesty, is  now  Gregers  Werle,  just  as  earnest 
and  sincere  in  his  claims  for  the  ideal  and  in 
his  strictures  upon  the  erring.  But  from  what 
a  different  point  of  view,  with  what  different 
results !  If  Stockmann  is  a  public-spirited  re- 
former, Werle  is  a  sneak  and  a  nuisance.  Yet 
the  two  men's  ideals  coincide.  Why  this  shift- 
ing of  position  on  the  part  of  Ibsen  ? 
79 


ICONOCLASTS 

A  period  of  depression,  consequent  upon  his 
uninterrupted  labours  and  their  seeming  futility, 
may  have  been  one  reason ;  the  other  is  prob- 
ably because  Ibsen,  charged  with  the  spirit  of 
bitter  mockery  and  in  a  pessimistic  humour, 
wished  to  show  the  obverse  of  his  medal.  From 
Brand  to  Stockmann  his  idealists  had  been 
heaven-stormers.  Well,  here  is  a  heaven-stormer, 
an  idealist,  who  is  a  dangerous  man  because  he 
tells  the  truth.  Is  it  well  to  blurt  out  the  truth 
on  all  occasions  ?  The  result  of  this  thesis  is 
one  of  the  most  entertaining,  one  of  the  most 
tragic,  plays  of  the  series. 

The  Wild  Duck  has  several  drawbacks,  the 
chief  being  the  confusing  mixture  of  satire  and 
tragedy ;  the  satire  almost  oversteps  the  limita- 
tions of  satire,  the  tragic  emphasis  seems  to  be 
placed  at  the  wrong  spot.  The  two  qualities 
mingle  indifferently.  And  the  act  ends  are  not 
satisfying ;  they  lack  climax,  especially  after  the 
catastrophe.  But  the  dialogue  as  in  The  League 
of  Youth  is  an  admirable  transcript  from  life. 
Each  character  speaks ;  nothing  sounds  as  if 
written.  The  glory  of  The  Wild  Duck  is  its 
characterization.  Even  the  implacable  Dr.  Nor- 
dau  praises  Gina  Ekdal,  calling  her  a  female 
Sancho  Panza.  The  comparison  is  a  happy 
one,  for  her  husband,  Hjalmar  Ekdal,  is  a  Don 
Quixote  of  shreds  and  patches,  a  weak,  vain, 
boastful,  gluttonous,  shiftless  fellow,  and,  of 
course,  an  idealist.  He  raves  of  the  ideal,  and 
he  is  kept  to  an  insane  pitch  of  cloudy  self- 
80 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

exaltation  by  Gregers  Werle,  who,  discovering 
that  Gina  was  a  former  mistress  of  his  father, 
tells  Ekdal  with  dire  results.  The  little  Hedwig, 
the  most  touching  in  Ibsen's  gallery  of  chil- 
dren, is  also  worked  upon  by  the  mischief 
maker,  so  that  she  kills  herself  from  a  spirit 
of  sacrifice — more  of  Werle's  idealism. 

Ekdal  talks  grandiloquently  about  shattered 
honour  to  Gina,  who  bids  him  eat  bread,  drink 
coffee  —  he  has  been  out  all  night  airing  his 
woes  to  the  storm.  The  woman's  homely  wit, 
solid  common  sense,  and  big  heart  are  given 
with  satisfying  verisimilitude.  Gregers'  father, 
and  his  housekeeper,  Mrs.  Sorby ;  the  garret  of 
the  photographer  Ekdal,  where  his  disgraced, 
old  drunken  father  has  rigged  up  a  mock  forest 
in  which  he  hunts  the  "wild  duck"  and  other 
tame  fowl ;  the  character  of  Relling,  Ibsen 
again  masked,  whose  sardonic  humour,  cruel 
on  the  surface,  is  in  reality  prompted  by  a  kind 
heart  —  he  makes  people  believe  they  are  grander 
than  they  are  and  therefore  makes  them  happier ; 
all  these  figures  in  this  amazing  Vanity  Fair  are 
handled  masterfully.  The  World-Lie  is  here 
in  microcosmic  proportions.  Every  one,  except 
the  stolid,  unimaginative  Gina,  swaggers  about 
in  the  sordid  atmosphere  of  deception.  Werle 
always  makes  matters  worse,  and  on  a  painful 
note  of  tragedy  the  curtain  falls.  The  tyranny 
of  the  ideal  is  clearly  set  forth. 


81 


ICONOCLASTS 

XI 

ROSMERSHOLM 

(1886) 

Rosmersholm  was  finished  in  1886.  It  fol- 
lowed The  Wild  Duck,  that  ghastly  mockery  of 
Ibsen's  own  ideals,  and  in  its  turn  it  was  followed 
by  The  Lady  from  the  Sea.  The  astonishingly 
fecund  imagination  that  drew  Gina  Ekdal  in  The 
Wild  Duck  did  not  show  symptoms  of  fatigue 
in  the  characterization  of  Rosmersholm.  Its  first 
representation  occurred  on  January  17,  1887. 
Bergen,  Norway,  and  later  Berlin,  heard  it 
twenty-five  times  in  one  season.  London  had  its 
taste  of  the  strange  combination  of  evil  and  good 
on  February  23,  1891  ;  Paris,  October  4,  1893, 
with  Lugne"-Poe"s  company.  All  Europe  wit- 
nessed with  astonishment  Rosmersholm,  and 
New  York  had  its  first  English  performance 
March  28,  1904,  at  the  Princess  Theatre  by 
the  Century  players. 

Rosmersholm  is  not  an  agreeable  drama. 
Why  any  one  who  prefers  amusement  should 
sit  it  out  is  strange :  stranger  still  the  impulse 
to  abuse  it  because  it  does  not  give  the  same 
pleasure  as  the  circus.  Like  Hamlet  Rosmers- 
holm has  a  long  foreground  —  Emerson  said 
the  same  of  Walt  Whitman.  Hamlet  comes 
before  us  after  the  mischief  of  his  life  has  been 
worked,  his  father  has  been  slain,  his  mother 
82 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

has  married  the  slayer  of  her  son's  father,  of  her 
son's  happiness.  The  first  scene  in  Hamlet  is 
illuminating ;  the  first  two  acts  of  Rosmersholm 
are  most  perplexing  to  an  audience  unprepared 
for  them  by  study.  The  technical  error  of  the 
modern  play  lies  here :  until  Act  III  we  are  left 
in  darkness  as  to  Rebekka's  character  and  her 
ruling  motives.  Dr.  Emil  Reich  proposed, 
merely  as  a  matter  of  experiment,  a  schemata 
or  a  new  scenario,  in  which  the  first  two  acts 
would  show  Rebekka  West  freshly  arrived  at 
Rosmersholm,  her  conduct  with  Beata  Rosmer, 
the  slow  persecution  of  that  unfortunate  lady, 
and  her  death  by  suicide  at  the  mill-dam.  This 
idea  has  only  one  drawback  —  Ibsen  did  not 
follow  it  when  he  planned  his  work. 

The  truth  is  that,  notwithstanding  its  mastery 
of  character,  Rosmersholm  must  not  be  viewed 
as  a  drama  following  any  previous  model.  Emile 
Faguet  declines  to  consider  any  longer  the 
northern  dramatist  as  a  realist.  In  his  early 
prose  dramas,  when  he  filled  in  his  canvas  with 
jostling  throngs,  Ibsen  was  a  painter  of  manners; 
but  as  he  grew,  as  his  method  became  less  that 
of  his  predecessors  and  more  of  his  own,  the 
action  became  more  intense.  The  modern 
psychologic  drama  was  born,  the  drama  in  which 
wills  collide,  but  not  the  will  for  trivial  things. 
It  is  the  eternal  duel  of  the  sexes,  the  duel 
of  the  old  and  the  new.  In  this  sombre  at- 
mosphere, subjected  to  many  pressures  by  the 
black  and  alembicated  art  of  the  dramatic  wizard, 
83 


ICONOCLASTS 

the  circumstances  that  occur  externally  are  of 
little  significance,  the  dialogue  spoken  not  to  be 
accepted  unless  for  its  "secondary  intention." 
Bald  on  its  surface,  its  cumulative  effect  dis- 
closes the  souls  of  his  people.  Commonplace, 
even  provincial  as  are  their  gestures,  their  sur- 
roundings, we  presently  see  the  envelope  of  hu- 
manity melt  away,  and  soon  exposed  are  the 
real  creatures,  the  real  men  and  women,  exposed 
as  in  a  dream.  It  is  a  cruel  art  this  that  un- 
wraps leaf  by  leaf  the  coverings  of  the  human 
soul.  With  the  average  dramatist,  clever  though 
he  may  be,  his  inspiration  compared  to  Ibsen's 
is  like  fire  in  a  sheaf  of  straw  —  the  spark  glows 
for  an  instant  and  then  there  is  a  vivid  crackling 
of  shallow  flame.  We  witness  the  illuminated 
edge  of  an  idea,  and  then  it  fades  into  the  black- 
ness. Ibsen's  flame  is  more  murky  than  brill- 
iant ;  but  it  makes  light  the  swamps  he  traverses 
on  his  irresistible  progress  to  the  mountains 
beyond. 

Isolated  then  as  is  the  milieu  of  Rosmersholm, 
its  real  territory  is  spiritual  and  not  Rosmer's 
gloomy  manor-house.  The  real  and  the  ideal 
are  indescribably  blended.  Only  after  much 
study  does  the  character  of  Rebekka  Gamvik, 
called  West,  yield  its  secrets.  She  was  born  in 
Finmark.  Her  mother,  possibly  of  Lapp  origin, 
had  carried  on  an  intrigue  with  Dr.  West. 
Rebekka  was  its  fruit.  This  she  did  not  know 
until  too  late  to  avert  a  hideous  catastrophe  ;  it 
was  not  alone  her  illegitimacy  that  so  horrified 
84 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

her  when  Rector  Kroll  informed  her  of  it  — 
there  were  depths  which  she  did  not  care  to 
explore  farther,  though  she  made  the  offer  to 
Rosmer.  Dr.  West  at  his  death  bequeathed  a 
small  library  to  his  adopted  daughter,  and  this 
proved  a  Pandora  box  both  to  her  and  to  Ros- 
mersholm.  Books  of  a  "  liberal "  character 
filled  the  mind  of  the  young  woman  with  danger- 
ous ideas ;  for  like  the  disciple  in  Paul  Bourget's 
novel,  she  speedily  translated  these  ideas  into 
action.  As  cunning  as  Becky  Sharp,  as  amo- 
rous as  Emma  Bovary,  as  ambitious  as  Lady 
Macbeth,  Rebekka  West  is  the  most  complete 
portrait  of  a  designing  woman  that  we  know 
of ;  she  is  more  trouble-breeding  than  Hedda 
Gabler. 

Vernon  Lee  speaks  of  "  the  certainty  that 
something  is  going  on,  that  certain  people  are 
contriving  to  live,  struggle,  and  suffer,  such  as 
I  am  haunted  with  after  reading  Thackeray, 
Stendhal,  or  Tolstoy."  She  quotes  William 
James's  phrase,  "the  warm,  familiar  acquies- 
cence which  belongs  to  the  sense  of  reality." 
All  greatly  imagined  characters  in  fiction  and 
drama  have  this  "  organic,  inevitable  existence," 
which  persists  in  the  memory  after  the  book  is 
closed,  after  the  curtain  has  fallen.  Rebekka 
West  is  among  these  characters.  She  is  more 
terrible  than  one  of  Felicien  Rop's  etched  "  Cold 
Devils."  She  grows  in  the  mind  like  a  poisonous 
vegetation  in  the  tropics.  More  magnificent  in 
her  power  to  will  and  execute  evil  than  Hedda 
85 


ICONOCLASTS 

Gabler,  she  weakens  at  the  crucial  hour;  this 
same  will  is  paralyzed  by  the  old  faiths  she  had 
sneered  away.  Edmund  Gosse  considers  the 
failure  of  Rosmer  as  an  instance  of  new  wine 
fermenting  in  old  bottles.  Equally,  jn  Rebekka's 
case,  the  old  wine  spoils  in  the  new  bottles. 

Taking  her  courage  in  both  hands  the  comely 
young  woman  contrives  to  enter  the  household 
of  Rector  Kroll,  whose  sister  Beata  is  married 
to  Rosmer.  Kroll  is  a  sturdy  schoolmaster,  an 
orthodox  Conservative,  settled  in  his  convic- 
tion that  the  world  was  made  for  good  church- 
men with  fat  purses  —  by  no  means  a  ludicrous 
or  a  despicable  character.  As  drawn  by  Ibsen, 
his  is  a  massive  personality,  —  sane,  worldly-wise, 
a  man  who  hates  the  things  of  the  spirit  just  as 
he  hates  radicalism.  But  he  doesn't  know  this. 
And  it  is  the  irony  of  his  fate  that  he  utters 
those  smug  phrases  dedicated  by  usage  to  mat- 
ters spiritual,  while  he  walks  in  the  way  of  the 
flesh.  A  tower  of  strength,  Kroll  is  more  than 
the  match  for  such  a  dreamer  as  Johannes  Ros- 
mer. Brendel,  besides  being  a  fantastic  adum- 
bration of  Ibsen,  has  propulsive  power.  He 
changes,  at  each  of  his  two  appearances,  the 
current  of  Rosmer's  destiny. 

Rebekka  intuitively  discerns  this  little  rift 
in  the  armour  of  Kroll,  and  flatters  the  worthy 
teacher,  flatters  his  wife  until  she  smuggles  her- 
self beneath  the  Kroll  roof-tree.  There  she  en- 
counters Rosmer  and  his  wife  Beata.  The  latter 
is  attracted  by  the  fresh,  vivacious  stranger  with 
86 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

the  free  manners.  Life  at  Rosmersholm  is  dull ; 
Johannes  is  a  student  of  heraldry  and  a  poor 
companion.  Again  Rebekka  moves.  She  is 
soon  mistress  of  Rosmersholm.  Her  quick 
brain  makes  her  a  delight  to  the  master,  her 
hypocritical  sympathy  an  actual  necessity  to  his 
wife.  Then  begins  the  systematic  undermining 
of  both.  She  lends  Dr.  West's  books  to  the 
clergyman,  and  she  insinuates  into  the  feeble 
brain  of  Beata  the  deadly  idea  that  because  of 
her  childlessness  she  is  no  longer  worthy  to 
remain  Madame  Rosmer.  Slowly  this  idea 
expands,  and  its  growth  is  accelerated  when 
Beata  sees  Johannes  falling  away  from  the  faith 
of  his  fathers.  Sick  in  body,  sick  in  brain,  the 
deluded  woman  is  led  step  by  step  to  the  fatal 
mill  stream.  Before  the  confession  that  Rebekka 
is  disgraced  and  must  leave  Rosmersholm  at 
once,  Beata  recoils,  and  quickly  commits  suicide. 
And  now  the  curtain  rises  on  Act  I. 

While  these  facts  are  revealed  by  subtle  indi- 
cations in  the  dialogue,  a  feeling  of  dissatisfaction 
is  also  aroused.  Not  until  Act  III  do  we  learn 
of  them  completely,  then  through  Rebekka's 
defiant  confession.  This  confession  is  brought 
about  by  a  simple  result,  the  failure  of  Rosmer 
to  reach  her  ambitious  expectations.  He  is  an 
idealist,  a  hero  of  dreams,  one  who  longs  to  step 
into  the  noisy  arena  of  life  and  "  ennoble  "  men. 
Little  wonder  his  brother-in-law  Kroll  mocks 
him.  A  Don  Quixote  without  the  Don's  cour- 
age. Surely  Ibsen  was  smiling  in  his  sleeve  at 
87 


ICONOCLASTS 

this  milk-and-water  Superman,  this  would-be 
meddling  reformer  to  whom  he  adds  as  pendant 
the  pure  caricature  of  Ulric  Brendel.  Full  of 
the  new  and  heady  wisdom  garnered  from  Dr. 
West's  library,  Rosmer  resolves  to  break  away 
from  his  political  party,  his  early  beliefs,  his 
very  social  order.  The  insidious  teachings  of 
Rebekka  flush  his  feeble  arteries.  He  defies 
Kroll,  and  the  war  begins.  It  is  not  very  heroic, 
principally  consisting  in  mud-throwing  by  rival 
newspapers.  Ibsen's  vindictive  irony  —  for  the 
episode  was  suggested  by  the  disordered  politics 
of  Norway  in  1885  —  has  ample  opportunities 
for  expression  in  the  character  of  Mortensgaard, 
the  editor  of  the  opposition  journal,  a  man  who 
has  succeeded  in  life  because,  as  Brendel  truth- 
fully says,  he  has  managed  to  live  without  ideals. 
Mortensgaard  is  very  vital.  He  is  a  scoundrel, 
but  an  engaging  one  in  his  outspoken  cynicism. 
It  is  only  in  print  that  he  hedges.  As  much 
as  he  desires  the  support  of  Rosmer,  easily  the 
most  prominent  man  on  the  country-side,  it  is 
as  Rosmer  the  priest  and  conservative  and  not 
Rosmer  the  radical.  There  are  too  many  of  the 
latter  tribe ! 

This  shifting  of  standards  puzzles  the  clergy- 
man ;  but  when  he  learns  that  the  editor  has 
a  letter  written  by  Beata  which  might  incrimi- 
nate both  Rebekka  and  himself,  then  he  begins 
to  see  his  false  position,  and  also  the  peril  of 
playing  with  such  fire.  Slowly  he  is  undeceived 
as  to  Rebekka's  character.  He  catches  her 
88 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

eavesdropping,  and  is  stunned  by  her  confession 
of  treachery  and  murder.  In  the  last  act  the 
bewildered  man  hears  another  upsetting  disclos- 
ure. On  the  eve  of  her  departure  for  the  north, 
and  after  Rosmer  has  made  his  peace  with  Kroll 
and  his  party,  she  blurts  forth  the  fatal  truth. 
She  has  long  loved  Rosmer,  and  that  love,  at 
first  passionate,  selfish,  impelled  her  to  crime ; 
with  the  months  came  a  great  peace,  and  then, 
like  a  palimpsest  showing  through  the  corrupt 
training  of  her  girlhood,  her  conscience  asserted 
itself.  Rosmersholm  and  the  Rosmer  ideals 
had  begun  their  work  of  denudation  and  disin- 
tegration. If  the  Rosmer  ideal  ennobled,  it 
also  killed  happiness,  which  really  means  that, 
the  sting  of  her  wickedness  being  extracted, 
the  woman  was  powerless  for  good  or  for  evil ; 
she  no  longer  had  the  inclination  to  descend 
into  the  infernal  gulf  of  crime,  nor  had  she  the 
will  power  to  live  the  higher  life.  The  common 
notion  is  that  Rebekka  is  converted  by  pure 
love.  It  is  a  suspiciously  sudden  conversion. 
Rather  let  us  incline  to  the  belief  that  the  main- 
spring of  her  will  was  broken,  even  before  Ros- 
mer offered  her  marriage.  Of  a  cerebral  type, 
like  the  majority  of  Ibsen's  heroines,  the  violence 
of  her  passion  once  cooled,  she  had  nothing  to 
make  her  life  worth  while.  Her  confession 
calmed  her  nerves  ;  after  it,  like  many  notorious 
criminals,  she  was  indifferent  to  the  outcome. 

In    Rosmer  the    old   churchly    leaven  began 
to  work.     Horrified  by  Rebekka's  revelation,  as 


ICONOCLASTS 

disappointed  in  her  as  she  was  in  him,  he  de- 
manded why  she  had  confessed  her  love.  To 
give  you  back  your  innocence,  she  replied. 
Does  he  wish  for  another  test  ?  —  then  make 
one,  she  will  not  fear  it.  Straightway  the  stern 
priest  awakens  in  him ;  he  has  never  cast  off, 
despite  his  blasphemies,  the  yoke  of  the  Lord. 
This  woman  that  he  loves  was  the  murderess  of 
his  wife  Beata.  An  eye  for  an  eye  !  Expiation 
must  be  by  blood  sacrifice  !  Does  she  dare  go 
sut  on  the  bridge  across  the  stream  and  • —  ? 
Rebekka,  worn  out,  sick  of  the  vileness  of  her 
soul,  weary  of  this  life  which  can  now  promise 
nothing,  eagerly  assents.  She  will  go,  and 
go  alone.  Soon  the  last  tremor  of  manhood 
is  felt  in  the  superstitious  brain  of  Rosmer. 
No,  she  shall  not  go  alone.  Together  as  man 
and  wife,  sealed  by  a  kiss,  they  will  go  to 
eternity.  And  then  the  male  moral  coward 
and  the  female  companion  of  his  destiny  walk 
calmly  to  their  fate.  The  housekeeper  watches 
them  fall  in  the  raging  pool,  and  she  is  not  as 
much  surprised  as  one  would  imagine. 

"  The  dead  wife  has  taken  them,"  she  ex- 
claims, for,  like  every  one  at  Rosmersholm,  she 
believes  in  the  triumph  of  the  dead. 

Rebekka  West  recalls  to  Georg  Brandes  the 
traits  of  a  Russian  woman,  rather  than  a  Scan- 
dinavian. This  is  true.  She  might  have  stepped 
out  of  a  Dostoievsky  novel.  She  is  far  more  in- 
teresting because  far  more  complex  than  Hedda 
Gabler,  while  not  so  modish  or  so  fascinating. 
J90 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

She  is  less  of  a  moral  monster  than  Hedda,  and 
far  braver.  She,  at  least,  has  tested  life  and  found 
its  taste  bitter  in  the  mouth.  Her  eroticism  we 
must  take  for  granted ;  in  the  play  she  displays 
nothing  of  it;  all  is  retrospective  and  introspec- 
tive. The  woman  never  contemplated  suicide ; 
but  that  way  out  of  the  muddle  is  as  good  as 
a  wretched  existence  in  some  Finnish  village. 
Rosmer  proposes  the  suicide,  he  dares  not  face 
his  own  wrecked  ideals ;  it  takes  a  man  who  is 
master  of  himself  to  master  his  fellows.  Life 
is  like  running  water  in  his  hands ;  the  woman 
he  loved  is  a  failure ;  all  things  come  too  late  to 
those  who  wait.  Of  Rebekka's  repentance  Ibsen 
leaves  us  in  no  doubt ;  but  that  she  would  have 
elected  self-slaughter  for  her  end  one  strongly 
discredits.  It  is  despair,  not  heroism,  that  ex- 
alts her.  She  committed  crime  for  love,  and 
now  that  crime  she  will  expiate  by  self-surrender 
to  her  lover's  wish. 

Browning  would  have  delighted  in  such  a 
theme  as  this,  and  might  have  developed  it  into 
a  second  Ring  and  the  Book.  But  dramatically 
the  English  poet  could  never  have  beaten  and 
bruised  the  idea  into  shape.  Ibsen  has  sur- 
mounted perilous  obstacles  in  his  dramatic 
treatment  of  a  purely  psychologic  subject.  We 
wish  to  witness  a  conflict  of  wills,  and  not  the 
hearsay  of  such  a  conflict.  Thus  nearly  two 
acts  seem  wasted  before  the  real  situation  occurs 
at  the  close  of  Act  II,  when  Rosmer  proposes 
marriage.  But  so  little  does  the  poet  care  for 
91 


ICONOCLASTS 

incident,  for  detail,  that  Rosmersholm  might  be 
played  in  one  scene ;  the  main  action  takes  place 
before  the  curtain  goes  up.  The  drama  is  a 
curious  blending  of  several  styles  —  there  are 
two  motives  and  two  manners.  Both  Free  Will 
and  Determinism  —  not  such  Hegelian  oppo- 
sites  as  we  imagine  —  have  each  a  share ;  while 
a  mingling  of  romance  and  realism  is  shown 
in  the  narration  and  in  the  background.  The 
White  Horse  of  Rosmersholm  is  a  colourful  bit 
of  symbolism,  recalling  Walter  Scott ;  the  acces- 
sory characters  are  the  homeliest  and  most 
natural  imaginable.  Auguste  Ehrhard,  Ibsen's 
French  admirer,  has  pointed  out  that  in  his 
subsidiary  figures  the  dramatist  is  very  lifelike 
and  his  chief  characters  are  usually  the  mouth- 
pieces of  his  theories. 

The  protagonist  of  Rosmersholm  is  Beata. 
She  is  seldom  long  absent  from  each  of  the 
four  acts.  She  peers  over  the  edges  of  the  dia- 
logue, and  in  every  pause  one  feels  her  unseen 
presence.  An  appalling  figure  this  drowned 
wife,  with  her  staring,  fish-like  eyes !  She 
revenges  herself  on  the  living  in  the  haunted 
brain  of  her  wretched  husband,  and  she  exas- 
perates Rebekka,  slowly  wearing  away  her  op- 
position until  the  doleful  catastrophe.  There 
is  something  both  Greek  and  Gothic  in  this 
spectral  fury,  this  disquieting  Ligeia  of  the  mill- 
dam. 

We  find  the  old  hero  and  heroine  obsessed 
by  fate,  replaced  by  this  neurasthenic  pair. 
92 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

The  antique  convention  is  altered,  ancient  val- 
ues depreciated.  A  hero  is  no  longer  interest- 
ing or  heroic ;  the  heroine,  a  criminal,  is  no 
longer  sympathetic.  Yet  we  are  enthralled  by 
this  spectacle;  for  if  cultivated  man  disdains  the 
crude  dramatic  pictures  of  lust  and  cruelty 
admired  of  his  ancestors,  he,  nevertheless, 
hankers  after  tragedy.  And  it  is  for  the  mod- 
ern that  Ibsen  has  devised  a  tragic,  ironic 
drama  of  the  soul.  In  doing  this  the  dramatist 
is  the  slave  of  his  own  epoch,  for,  to  quote 
Goethe  again,  a  genius  is  in  touch  with  his 
century  only  by  virtue  of  his  defects ;  he,  too, 
must  be  an  accomplice  of  his  times. 

Brandes  has  quoted  Kierkegaard  in  relation 
to  Ibsen's  position :  "  Let  others  complain  of 
this  age  as  being  wicked.  I  complain  of  it  as 
being  contemptible,  for  it  is  devoid  of  passion. 
Men's  thoughts  are  thin  and  frail  as  lace,  they 
themselves  are  the  weakling  lace-makers.  The 
thoughts  of  their  hearts  are  too  paltry  to  be 
sinful."  Browning  has  expressed  the  same 
sentiment  in  his  poem,  The  Statue  and  the 
Bust ;  Ibsen  transformed  it  into  drama.  His 
men  are  dreamers,  his  women  devils ;  both 
stop  short  of  the  great  renunciation  or  the  great 
revolt.  It  is  the  realization  of  his  failure  that 
drives  Rosmer  and  Rebekka  with  him  to  death. 
As  her  strength  of  will  once  dominated  him,  so 
his  weakness  ultimately  overmasters  her.  She 
is  a  woman  after  all,  a  woman  in  whom  instinct 
has  cried  so  imperiously  that  it  wrecks  her  soul. 
93 


ICONOCLASTS 

A  fiddle  may  be  mended,  says  Peer  Gynt,  but  a 
bell,  never !  A  cracked  bell  might  be  the  symbol 
of  this  extraordinary  drama. 

Rosmersholm  has  a  planetary  moral,  and  not 
a  theologic  one.  And  the  moral  law  cannot  be 
transcended,  he  teaches  in  his  elliptical  style. 
He  is  in  the  uttermost  analysis  an  optimist. 

Those  self-indulgent  weaklings  who  seek  in 
Ibsen's  dramas  for  confirmation  of  their  medi- 
ocre ideals  will  be  sadly  mistaken.  Ibsen,  if  he 
teaches  anything,  teaches  that  the  ego  is  a 
source  of  danger.  It  is  in  the  delicate  relations 
of  the  sexes  that  he  reveals  himself  the  sym- 
pathetic poet  and  healer.  And  what  greater 
tragedy  on  earth  is  there  than  an  unhappy 
marriage  ?  Ever  the  moral  idea  is  the  motive 
of  his  plays,  the  one  overarching  idea  of  our 
universe :  man's  duty  to  himself,  man's  duty  to 
his  neighbour !  That  has  been  the  chief  concern 
of  all  the  great  dramatists,  and  to  its  problems 
this  poet-psychologist  has  added  his  burden  of 
the  discussion. 

In  Rosmersholm  we  see  how  the  self-decep- 
tions of  the  man  and  woman  who  disregarded 
the  natural  law  and  worldly  wisdom  ruined 
their  lives. 

Dr.  Wicksteed  concludes  that  "the  strength 
and  weakness  of  Ibsen's  much-discussed  treat- 
ment of  marriage  lie  in  the  fact  that  he  does 
not  deal  with  it  as  marriage  at  all,  but  as  the 
most  striking  instance  of  the  ever  recurrent 
problem  of  social  life,  the  problem  that  we  may 
94 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

hide  in  other  cases,  but  must  face  here,  the 
problem  of  combining  freedom  with  perma- 
nence and  loyalty,  of  combining  self-surrender 
with  self-realization." 

Faguet  scores  Brandes  for  denying  that 
Ibsen  alone  among  dramatists  has  used  the 
symbol  in  a  peculiarly  poetic  manner,  proving 
that  if  Ibsen  is  a  realist  he  is  also  a  psycholo- 
gist, who  with  his  lantern  illuminates  the  re- 
cesses of  the  soul.  "For  example,"  writes  M. 
Faguet,  "  in  Rosmersholm,  northern  nature  in 
its  entirety,  with  its  savageness,  its  immense 
expanse  of  space,  its  broad  horizons,  its  lofty 
heavens,  is  the  symbol,  to  my  mind,  of  the 
moral  liberty  to  which  aspire  several  characters 
of  the  play,  as,  indeed,  do  half  of  Ibsen's  char- 
acters." Finally,  the  symbol  is  above  all  a 
means  for  the  dramatic  poet  to  give  full  ex- 
pression to  the  poetry  in  his  soul  ...  in  Ibsen 
it  is  essentially  a  direct  product  of  the  author's 
poetic  faculty.  .  .  .  Up  to  the  present  time 
Ibsen  is  the  only  dramatic  poet  to  write  symbol- 
ical dramas,  that  is  to  say,  dramas  into  which 
a  symbol  is  introduced  occasionally  by  way  of 
explanation  or  commentary,  or  as  an  element 
of  beauty."  The  symbol,  then,  is  not  a  sign 
of  a  weakened  imagination,  as  some  bigoted 
"psychiatrists"  would  have  us  believe. 

And    the    interpretation    of     Rosmersholm ! 

Not  a  half-dozen   actresses  on  the  globe  have 

grasped  the  complex  skeins  of  Rebekka  West's 

character,  and   grasping   them  have  been  able 

95 


ICONOCLASTS 

to  send  acioss  the  footlights  the  shivering 
music  of  her  soul.  Thus  far  Scandinavian 
women  have  best  interpreted  her  to  the  satis- 
faction of  the  poet.  The  Italians  are  too 
tragic,  the  French  too  histrionically  brilliant; 
it  is  a  new  virtuosity,  a  new  fingering  of  the 
dramatic  keyboard,  that  is  demanded. 

XII 

THE   LADY  FROM  THE  SEA 
(1888) 

Told  with  infinite  technical  skill,  displayed  on 
a  canvas,  the  tints  of  which  modulate  from  dull 
copper  to  the  vague  mistiness  of  a  summer  sea, 
this  mermaid  allegory  of  Ibsen  had  a  charm 
that  has  almost  vanished  in  the  translation  and 
vanishes  still  more  at  a  performance.  Ellida 
Wangel,  The  Lady  from  the  Sea,  is  the  second 
wife  of  Dr.  Wangel,  a  sensible,  healthy  bour- 
geois. She  is  jealous  of  his  dead  wife,  she  is  a 
neurotic  creature  given  to  reverie  and  easily  im- 
pressed by  the  strange,  the  far-away,  the  poetry 
of  distance.  In  a  mood  of  fantastic  excitement 
she  once  betrothed  herself  to  a  stranger,  a 
sailor  on  an  American  ship.  He  comes  back 
to  claim  her,  and  so  perfectly  adjusted  are  the 
atmospheric  conditions  of  the  drama,  that  we 
believe  she  should  leave  her  home  and  go  away 
with  this  slightly  supernatural  and  old-time  ro- 
mantic figure. 

96 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

In  a  stirring  interview  Ellida  lets  out  the 
truths  about  her  married  life  to  the  perplexed 
Wangel  —  who  is  a  sort  of  elder  brother  to 
Helmer,  though  kinder  of  heart.  "  You  bought 
me,"  she  cries,  her  bosom  overcharged  with  the 
truth.  It  is  the  truth,  but  then,  who  cares  to 
face  domestic  truth  ?  The  worthy  doctor  is  sadly 
taken  aback.  He  had  married  Ellida  because 
his  children  needed  a  mother ;  he  had  —  and 
"you  bought  me  all  the  same,"  is  the  cutting 
response.  It  is  so.  The  man  sees  the  case  from 
a  different  angle,  and  listens  to  her  story  of  the 
stranger.  She  will  go  when  he  returns,  she 
says.  He  does  return.  He  does  claim  her; 
and  in  the  garden  scene  at  the  end  we  see 
a  situation  not  unlike  that  last  act  of  Candida. 
The  stranger  bids  Ellida  prepare  for  departure. 
Wangel,  who  knows  women  better  than  it  would 
appear,  tells  her  to  go.  "  Now  you  can  choose 
in  freedom  and  your  own  responsibility."  The 
woman  wavers  and  finally  sends  the  sailor  about 
his  business.  The  problem  has  been  solved. 
Ellida  can  go  to  her  husband  of  her  ow»  free 
will. 

Wicksteed's  comment  is  refreshing.  "The 
mere  freedom  of  choice  in  which  Ellida  Wangel 
and  Nora  Helmer  lay  such  stress  is  but  a  condi- 
tion, not  a  principle  of  healthy  life.  .  .  .  Without 
the  spirit  of  self-surrender  free  choice  will  never 
secure  self-realization."  This  lady  of  the  light- 
house —  Ellida  was  brought  up  in  one  —  has 
two  stepdaughters,  the  eldest  of  whom  con- 
97 


ICONOCLASTS 

tracts  a  loveless  marriage,  as  does  Svanhild 
in  The  Comedy  of  Love,  for  the  sake  of  a  com- 
fortable home.  This  parallelism  in  the  sub-plot 
is  a  favourite  device  of  Ibsen —  as  though  the 
children  mimicked  the  parents.  The  younger 
daughter  later  becomes  the  celebrated  Hilda 
Wangel  who  charms  Master  Builder  Solness  to 
his  glory  and  ruin.  There  is  little  in  her  here 
that  gives  evidence  of  such  potentialities.  She 
is  rather  pert,  wild,  and  self-conscious.  The 
men  of  the  play  are  all  excellently  sketched. 
The  Lady  of  the  Sea,  too,  presents,  in  a  hazy 
symbol,  the  old  lesson  of  individuality  and  free 
choice.  But  the  parable  has  never  been  so 
poetically  uttered  except  in  Brand. 

It  is  pleasant  to  record  the  impressions  of 
a  performance  of  this  play  at  the  Lessing 
Theatre,  Berlin,  September  30,  1904.  Director 
Otto  Brahm  has  long  been  a  noted  Ibsenite,  his 
brochure  familiar  to  all  students  of  the  Scan- 
dinavian master.  Ibsen,  in  German,  plays  de- 
cidedly smoother,  with  more  sonority  and  an 
abundance  of  the  much-decried  "atmosphere." 
The  stage  settings,  as  is  usual  at  this  artistic 
playhouse,  were  beautiful.  Yet  one  felt  the 
danger  of  transferring  to  the  boards  such  an 
imaginative  idea.  In  the  hands  of  Agnes 
Sorma  the  difficult  r61e  of  Ellida  would  not 
have  suffered.  Irene  Triesch,  despite  her 
unequivocal  sincerity,  is  not  temperamentally 
suited  to  the  part.  A  mermaid  who  is  given 
to  morbid  reveries  and  a  fierce  buccaneer-like 
98 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

stranger  hardly  convince  us  in  this  miracle- 
hating  age.  Each  time  the  sailor  appeared 
with  his  big  cloak  and  melodramatic  hat  I 
expected  to  hear  the  theme  of  the  Flying 
Dutchman  intoned  by  an  invisible  orchestra. 
The  human  half  of  the  story  is  more  credible. 
Boletta  and  Hilda  are  real  flesh  and  blood, 
while  the  tutor  Arnholm,  impersonated  by  that 
excellent  character-actor,  Emmanuel  Reicher, 
was  as  big  a  bore  as  Ibsen  probably  intended 
him  to  be.  The  Lady  from  the  Sea  is  an  at- 
tempt to  capture  a  mood  in  which  Maeterlinck 
might  have  been  more  successful. 

XIII 
HEDDA  GABLER 

(1890) 

Hedda  Gabler  is  a  great  play,  great  despite 
its  unpleasant  theme,  and  also  remarkable,  inas- 
much as  its  subject-matter  is  essentially  undra- 
matic  —  "the  picture  not  of  an  action  but  of  a 
condition,"  as  Henry  James  puts  it.  The  Nor- 
wegian poet  usually  begins  to  develop  his  drama 
where  other  writers  end  theirs.  Yet  so  wonder- 
ful is  his  art  that  we  are  treated  to  no  long  ex- 
planations, no  retrospective  speeches ;  indeed, 
the  text  of  an  Ibsen  play  is  little  more  than  a 
series  of  memoranda  for  the  players.  Cuvier- 
like,  the  actor  must  reconstruct  a  living  human 
from  a  mere  bone  of  a  word.  These  words 
99 


ICONOCLASTS 

seem  detached,  seem  meaningless,  yet  in  action 
their  cohesiveness  is  unique;  dialogue  melts 
into  dialogue,  action  is  dovetailed  to  action, 
and  fleeting  gestures  reveal  a  state  of  soul. 
Ibsen  does  not  read  as  well  as  he  acts.  He 
is  extremely  difficult  to  interpret  for  the  reason 
that  the  old  technic  of  the  actor  is  inadequate, 
as  Bernard  Shaw  long  ago  declared. 

One  merit  of  the  piece  is  its  absence  of  liter- 
ary flavour.  It  is  a  slice  of  life.  In  his  prose 
dramas,  Ibsen  throws  overboard  the  entire  bag- 
gage of  "  literary  "  effects.  He  who  had  worked 
so  successfully  in  the  field  of  the  poetic  legen- 
dary and  historic  drama ;  who  had  fashioned 
that  mighty  trilogy  Brand,  Peer  Gynt,  and 
Emperor  and  Galilean,  saw  that  a  newer  rubric 
must  be  found  for  the  delineation  of  modern 
men  and  women,  of  modern  problems.  So 
style  is  absent  in  his  later  plays  —  style  in  the 
rhetorical  sense.  Revolutionist  as  he  is,  he  is 
nevertheless  a  formalist  of  the  old  school  in 
his  adherence  to  the  classic  unities.  In  Hedda 
Gabler  the  action  is  compressed  within  a  space  of 
about  thirty-six  hours,  in  one  room,  and  with  a 
handful  of  persons.  One  is  tempted  to  say  that 
the  principal  action  occurs  before  the  play  or 
"  off  "  the  stage  during  its  progress.  We  may 
see  that  Hedda  does  little  throughout.  Yet, 
through  some  magical  impartment  of  the  drama- 
tist, we  seem  to  be  in  possession  of  the  charac- 
teristic facts  of  her  nature  before  she  arrives 
on  the  scene.  Concision  does  not  alone  explain 
100 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

this,  it  may  be  noticed  in  other  plays  of  the 
Norwegian.  It  is  the  dramaturgic  gift  raised 
to  its  highest  power,  though  that  power  be 
expended  upon  base  metal.  Why  Ibsen  pre- 
ferred a  Hedda  to  an  Isolde  is  a  question  that 
would  lead  us  into  devious  paths. 

In  Hedda  Gabler  all  lyricism  is  sternly  sup- 
pressed. As  if  the  master  had  determined  to 
punish  himself  for  his  championing  of  individu- 
alism in  his  earlier  plays,  he  draws  the  portrait 
of  one  who  might  easily  figure  as  a  Nietzschean 
Super- Woman.  Preaching  that  the  state  is  the 
foe  of  the  individual,  that  only  revolution  — 
spiritual  revolution  —  can  regenerate  society, 
that  the  superior  man  and  woman  are  lonely, 
that  individual  liberty  must  be  fought  for  at  all 
hazards,  —  liberty  of  thought,  speech,  action,  — 
Ibsen  then  deliberately  shows  the  free  woman, 
one  emancipated  from  the  beliefs  of  her  family 
circle  and  her  country.  She  epitomizes  the 
latter-day  anti-social  being  and  is  rightfully 
considered  by  psychologists  as  a  flaming  sign 
of  the  times,  a  brief  for  the  social  democrats. 

With  remorseless  logic  and  an  implacable 
analysis  Ibsen  discovers  to  our  gaze  this  bare 
soul.  We  see  Hedda  at  school,  a  discontented, 
restless  girl,  envious  of  her  companions,  con- 
scious of  her  own  superiority,  mental  and  physi- 
cal, cruel  and  overbearing.  Little,  timid  Thea 
Rysing,  with  the  crown  of  white-gold  hair,  wavy, 
copious,  excites  anger  in  the  breast  of  the  badly 
balanced  Hedda.  She  pulls  the  hair  and  would 


ICONOCLASTS 

delight  to  see  it  burn.  After  all,  is  she  not 
General  Gabler's  daughter,  an  aristocrat,  though 
a  poor  one!  She  goes  into  society  and  has 
admirers.  Few  attract  her.  They  are  either 
too  stupid  or  not  rich  enough.  In  this  danger- 
ous predicament,  jelly-like  and  drifting,  she  en- 
counters Eiljert  Lovborg,  a  young  man  of  genius 
—  at  least  Ibsen  says  he  is ;  he  has  certainly  the 
temperament  of  erratic  genius,  though  at  no  time 
does  he  betray  the  possession  of  higher  gifts. 
Yet  an  interesting  man,  a  romancing  idealist, 
a  deceiver  of  himself  as  well  as  of  the  women 
before  whom  he  masquerades  and  poses  in  the 
role  of  the  misunderstood  and  persecuted.  He 
is  first  cousin  to  Hjalmar  Ekdal  in  The  Wild 
Duck,  one  of  those  egotists  of  the  self-pitying, 
elegiac  kind  who  weeps  when  he  regards  in  the 
mirror  his  own  sentimental  features. 

Despite  her  hardness,  vanity,  selfishness, 
Hedda  is  taken  in  by  this  clever  fellow.  Like 
Emma  Bovary  (though  socially  more  elevated) 
she  is  at  heart  an  incorrigible  romantic  and 
very  snobbish.  Modish  elegance  is  her  notion 
of  the  universe,  and  a  saddle  horse  with  a  man 
in  livery  discreetly  following  her  as  she  dashes 
through  the  crowded  park  represents  to  her 
the  top  notch  of  mundane  happiness.  Lovborg 
is  a  born  liar.  He  has  personal  address,  is 
undoubtedly  a  man  of  brains,  and  dissipated 
as  he  is  manages  to  surround  his  loose  living 
with  the  halo  of  Byronism.  His  debauches,  he 
believes,  are  the  result  of  a  finely  strung  nature 
102 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

in  conflict  with  a  prosaic  world.  Hedda  sympa- 
thizes with  this  view.  She  does  more.  She 
becomes  morbidly  interested  in  his  doings  and 
asks  imprudent  questions  which  the  man  right- 
fully construes  as  evidences  of  desire  for  the 
life  he  describes.  He  makes  his  first  error. 
It  is  Hedda's  opportunity  and  she  avails  her- 
self of  it.  Naturally  theatric,  she  seizes  her 
father's  pistol  —  there  is  a  brace  of  old  cavalry 
pistols  which  play  an  important  role  throughout 
—  and  threatens  Lovborg.  He  leaves  her  and 
pretends  that  he  is  going  to  the  dogs,  but  in 
reality  quits  the  city  and  takes  a  position  in  a 
country  family,  there  to  find  a  more  credulous 
victim,  Thea,  now  the  wife  of  Sheriff  Elvsted. 

Remember  that  these  experiences  are  not 
shown  on  the  stage.  Deftly  conveyed  by  the 
dramatic  stenography  of  Ibsen,  the  audience 
absorb  the  facts  almost  unconsciously ;  and 
when  the  curtain  falls  on  Act  II,  we  seem  to 
have  known  the  Gablers,  Tesmans,  Lovborg,  and 
Thea  for  years.  And  all  the  time  Ibsen  is  not 
overstepping  the  traditional  territory  of  the 
drama ;  his  Lovborg  and  Hedda,  his  Thea  and 
George,  his  Brack  —  are  they  not,  in  their 
relative  position,  stock  figures  for  any  classic 
comedy  ?  George  Tesman  is  own  brother  to 
Georges  Dandin  and  twin  to  Charles  Bovary. 
He  belongs  to  that  large  army  of  husbands 
called  by  Balzac  "the  predestined."  His  beard, 
eyes,  nose,  —  above  all  his  nose,  —  speech,  gait, 
jcloth.es,  are  they  not  so  many  stigmata  of  the 
103 


ICONOCLASTS 

man  whose  wife  will  deceive  him  ?  The  beauty 
of  the  situation  is  that  Hedda  does  not  betray 
George,  and  yet  she  seems  more  criminal  than 
the  timid  Thea,  who  boldly  deserts  her  old  hus- 
band to  follow  the  scapegrace  Lovborg.  Hedda 
is  the  woman  on  the  brink,  the  adulteress  in 
thought,  the  eternal  type  of  one  whose  will  is 
weakened  by  egoism.  Her  soul,  its  roots  nur- 
tured in  rank  soil,  has  expanded  secretly  into  a 
monstrous  growth.  Her  whole  life  has  been  one 
of  concealment.  She  has  lied,  presumably,  in 
her  girlhood,  as  she  lies  in  the  married  state. 
She  is  never  happy  except  when  teasing  a 
man.  Laura  Marholm  paints  her  portrait  as  the 
dtttraqute :  "  Her  wanton  curiosity,  her  constant 
longing,  inflame  the  decadent  and  appeal  directly 
to  his  sensuality ;  but  her  cowardice  and  disin- 
clination to  satisfaction  drive  her  forever  from 
attack  to  flight,  and  no  sooner  has  she  retreated 
than  she  stretches  forth  her  antennae  and  gropes 
for  him  again.  To  see  man  feverish  —  that  is 
what  she  lives  upon;  if  she  cannot  have  this 
atmosphere  about  her,  she  becomes  sallow,  hol- 
low-cheeked, and  hysteric." 

Here  is  Hedda  Gabler  sketched  in  a  few  words. 
A  cold  heart,  a  cool  head,  curious  but  not  sen- 
sual, combined  with  a  cowardly  fear  of  the  con- 
ventions —  a  snobbish  tribute  to  virtues  in  which 
she  does  not  believe —  these  sent  Hedda  Gabler 
to  her  destruction,  to  that  Button-moulder  who 
fashions  anew  the  souls  of  the  useless  in  his 
cosmic  dust-heap.  She  went  through  her  life 
104 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

with  the  chip  of  chastity  on  her  shoulder1,  yet 
dare  a  man  approach  her  and  she  is  in  the 
throes  of  mock  virtue.  She  made  Lovborg 
feel  this.  Brack,  with  the  measuring  eye 
of  a  worldly  man,  was  not  deceived  by  her 
tantrums ;  he  saw  the  essential  baseness  of  the 
creature. 

Hedda  stands  for  a  certain  order  of  her  sex  — 
not  the  "  strong-minded  "  or  "  advanced  "  —  that 
is,  happily,  in  the  minority.  In  Ibsen's  judg- 
ment she  is  doomed  to  failure  because  she  did 
not  dare  far  enough.  She  feared  to  sin,  not  be- 
cause of  scrupulosity,  but  because  of  the  world's 
opinion.  If  she  ever  allowed  tender  feelings  to 
usurp  the  hard  image  of  herself  enthroned  in 
her  soul,  they  were  for  Lovborg.  He  struck 
in  her  a  depraved  chord  of  feeling.  Both 
loved  pleasure.  Both  took  the  seeming  for 
actuality.  If  there  is  one  thing  that  discredits 
Lovborg's  claim  as  a  man  of  genius,  it  is  his 
worship  of  trivial  things.  The  scholar,  the  phi- 
losopher, the  poet,  seek  pleasure,  seek  the  gratifi- 
cation of  the  senses ;  but  Lovborg's  attitude  is 
too  base.  He  is  worthy  of  Hedda's  admiration, 
and  Hedda's  only. 

With  his  incomparable  irony  Ibsen  gives  the 
victory  to  the  weak,  to  the  stupid.  We  may  fore- 
see the  future  of  George  and  Thea  when  the 
shock  of  battle  has  passed.  Both,  dull  per- 
sons, plodding,  painstaking,  absolutely  devoid  of 
humour,  settle  down  to  a  peaceful  existence  over 
the  "great"  work  of  the  dead  Lovborg.  It  is 


ICONOCLASTS 

all  piteous,  all  hopelessly  banal  —  and  it  is  also 
daily  life  to  its  central  core. 

To  assert  that  Hedda's  acts  were  alone  the 
result  of  her  condition  would  be  to  place  the 
drama  within  the  category  of  the  pathologic. 
Rather  is  the  point  made  that,  despite  her  ap- 
proaching motherhood,  Hedda's  manifest  dis- 
gust at  any  reference  to  it  is  a  sign  of  her 
deep-seated  depravity.  She  loathes^  children, 
especially  a  child  of  Tesman.  She  is  too  selfish 
to  enter,  even  imaginatively,  into  the  joys  of 
maternity.  Ibsen  notes  this  when  he  puts  into 
George's  mouth  the  silly  speech  about  young 
wives  and  the  burning  of  the  manuscript.  Hedda 
is,  on  the  contrary,  less  hysterical  and  more  self- 
contained  after  marriage  than  before.  Nothing 
could  be  more  damnably  cold-blooded  than  her 
deliberate  manipulation  of  Lovborg's  vain  nature. 
Only  at  the  grate  as  she  burns  the  manuscript 
and  in  the  outburst  of  wild  music  preceding  her 
suicide  are  the  demoniac  forces  of  her  nature 
unloosed. 

The  former  act  is,  nevertheless,  controlled  by 
a  slow,  cautious  hate,  and  the  latter  occurs  off 
the  stage  ;  the  pistol  shot  is  the  final  punctuation 
mark  to  this  destructive,  restless  existence.  No, 
Ibsen  aimed  at  something  more  profound  than 
exhibition  of  ma'ternal  hysteria.  The  causes  of 
Hedda's  behaviour  dated  back  to  her  girlhood. 
She  was  perverse,  how  perverse  we  see  in  her 
shameless  confession  that  she  had  led  George  to 
an  avowal  simply  because  she  wanted  the  com- 
106 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

fortable  Falk  villa  for  a  residence.  Her  revolt 
against  life  was  bounded  by  her  petty  appetites, 
nothing  more ;  and  for  this  reason  she  is  an  in- 
valuable "  human  document." 

Removed  from  her  cramping  environments 
Hedda  would  have  developed  along  more  normal 
lines  ;  and  herein  lies  the  beauty  of  Ibsen's  prob- 
lem, Ibsen  who  always  asks  questions  —  like 
Rembrandt  in  his  Night  Watch  with  its  mystic 
daylight.  Hedda  might  have  become  an  actress 
or  a  circus  rider,  anything  less  evil  than  her 
position  as  the  trouble-breeding  wife  of  Tesman. 
By  enclosing  her  within  the  Tesman  walls,  sur- 
rounding her  with  stupid  and  dissipated  people, 
she  was  driven  in  upon  herself,  and  passing  from 
one  mood  of  exasperation  to  another  she  finally 
became  shipwrecked.  As  Allan  Monkhouse 
writes,  "  Hedda  Gabler  is  a  personification  of 
ennui,  a  daring  effort  of  imagination,  a  great 
piece  of  construction,  a  study  of  essentials  with 
all  accidental  human  element  omitted,  a  work 
indeed  not  of  realism,  though  surrounded  by 
realistic  details,  but  belonging  rather  to  such 
ideal  art  as  the  Melancholia  of  Albert  Diirer." 
Mr.  Monkhouse  could  have  quoted  La  Bruyere 
about  "opposition  truths  that  illuminate  one 
another."  Hedda  Gabler  is  one  of  those  "  oppo- 
sition truths  "  that  illuminate  an  entire  section 
of  her  sex. 

Technically,  Ibsen  has  not  surpassed  himself 
in  this  work.  Never  has  he  woven  his  patterns 
so  densely  —  the  pattern  of  character  and  the 
107 


ICONOCLASTS 

pattern  of  action.  As  in  a  dream  we  divine  the 
past  of  the  humans  he  sets  strutting  before  us, 
and  we  leave  the  theatre  as  if  obsessed  by  an 
ugly  nightmare.  Those  who  condemn  the  char- 
acters are  compelled  perforce  to  admire  the  cun- 
ning workmanship,  and  no  greater  error  can  be 
committed  than  supposing  the  two  may  be  dis- 
entangled. Study  carefully  the  play,  study 
carefully  its  performance,  and  then  despair  at 
separating  the  characterization  from  the  purely 
formal  elements.  Here  matter  and  manner  are 
merged  perfectly.  We  note  a  few  symbolic 
catchwords,  such  as  "vine  leaves,"  but  they 
serve  their  spiritual  as  well  as  their  technical 
purpose.  The  pistols,  too,  are  cunningly  pre- 
pared agents  of  ruin.  We  also  wonder  why 
George  is  such  a  blind  fool ;  why  Thea  so  soon 
consoles  herself,  with  Lovborg's  body  still  warm  ; 
why  Lovborg,  who  despises  Tesman,  should  be 
anxious  to  show  him  his  new  work.  But,  to 
quote  Mr.  James  again :  "  There  are  many 
things  in  the  world  that  are  past  finding  out, 
and  one  of  them  is  whether  the  subject  of  a 
work  had  not  better  have  been  another  subject. 
We  shall  always  do  well  to  leave  that  matter  to 
the  author ;  he  may  have  some  secret  for  solving 
the  riddle,  so  terrible  would  his  revenge  easily 
become  if  he  were  to  accept  a  responsibility  for 
his  theme."  And  further :  "  The  '  use '  of 
Hedda  Gabler  is  that  she  acts  on  others,  and 
that  even  her  most  disagreeable  qualities  have 
the  privilege,  thoroughly  undeserved  doubtless, 
108 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

but  equally  irresistible,  of  becoming  a  part  of 
the  history  of  others.  And  then  one  isn't  so 
sure  that  she  is  wicked,  and  by  no  means  sure 
that  she  is  disagreeable.  She  is  various  and 
sinuous  and  graceful,  complicated  and  natural ; 
she  suffers,  she  struggles,  she  is  human,  and 
by  that  fact  exposed  to  a  dozen  different  in- 
terpretations, to  the  importunity  of  our  sus- 
pense. .  .  ." 

This  seems  to  be  a  final  judgment — if  judg- 
ments of  Ibsen  can  be  final  —  upon  a  woman, 
who,  all  said,  is  human  enough  to  suffer,  suffer 
principally  because  she  feared  to  sin.  She  is 
not  a  caricature  of  the  "modern"  woman.  If 
she  had  become  conscious  of  the  claims  of 
others,  in  a  word  the  modern,  unselfish,  eman- 
cipated woman,  her  life  would  have  been  dif- 
ferent—  and  the  theatre  deprived  of  a  most 
fascinating  and  enigmatic  figure,  with  her  pallid 
skin,  her  haunting  gray  eyes,  her  sweet,  studied 
languor,  and  her  delicate  air  of  one  to  whom 
life  owes  its  richest  gifts. 

Dr.  Wicksteed,  in  his  admirable  lectures  on 
Ibsen,  remarks :  "  I  am  convinced  that  it  is  in 
this  typical  significance  of  marriage,  and  not 
in  any  special  interest  in  the  so-called  woman 
question  as  such,  that  we  are  to  seek  the  reason 
of  Ibsen's  constant  recurrence  to  this  theme. 
Suppress  individuality  and  you  have  no  life ; 
assert  it,  and  you  have  war  and  chaos.  .  .  . 
Hedda  Gabler  neither  drifted  nor  was  forced 
into  marriage,  but  she  deliberately  and  shame- 
109 


ICONOCLASTS 

lessly  paid  the  flattered  and  delighted  Tesman 
in  the  forged  coinage  of  love  for  opening  to  her 
a  retreat  from  the  career  she  had  exhausted,  and 
entry  into  the  best  career  she  could  still  think  of 
as  possible,  and  we  see  the  result.  Without  the 
spirit  of  self-surrender,  free  choice  will  never 
secure  self-realization." 

Her  death,  sought  because  of  cowardly  rea- 
sons, is  yet  the  one  real  fact  in  Hedda's  shallow, 
feverish  existence.  Death  could  alone  solve  the 
discords  of  her  life's  cruel  music. 

XIV 

THE  MASTER  BUILDER 
(1892) 

The  doctor  of  the  madhouse  at  Cairo,  in 
which  Peer  Gynt  crowns  himself  Emperor  of 
Himself,  said  of  his  "  patients  "  :  "  Each  one 
shuts  himself  up  in  the  cask  of  self,  plunges 
down  deep  in  the  ferment  of  self.  He's  her- 
metically sealed  with  the  bung  of  self,  and  he 
tightens  the  staves  in  the  well  of  self.  None 
has  a  tear  for  another's  woes,  none  has  a  sense 
for  another's  ideas.  Ourselves — that's  what 
we  are  in  thought  and  in  speech ;  ourselves 
to  the  outmost  plank  of  the  springboard." 

Such  a  sealed  soul  was  that  of  Halvard  Sol- 
ness  before  Hilda  Wangel  knocked  at  his  door 
to  demand  of  him  the  fulfilment  of  his  promise. 
Ten  years  earlier  he  had  promised  to  make  her 
no 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

a  princess.  She  was  then  a  child  and  had 
excitedly  waved  a  flag  when  she  saw  Solness 
in  the  pride  of  his  manhood,  the  greatest  of  the 
architects,  climb  to  the  top  of  the  scaffolding 
that  surrounded  the  newly  completed  church 
and  hang  a  wreath  on  the  weather-vane.  Her- 
enthusiasm  had  pleased  the  artist,  and  a  kiss 
was  given  with  the  promise.  Her  knock  is  as 
revolutionary  as  the  open  door  of  Nora's  house 
of  dolls.  As  Hilda  enters  she  brings  with  her 
brilliant  young  womanhood,  the  fresh  breeze 
of  the  new  century.  It  was  needed  in  the 
unhappy  Solness  household. 

Halvard  lost  his  former  home  through  a  fire ; 
it  was  the  beginning  of  his  luck  in  life  and  also 
the  date  of  his  unhappiness.  His  children  died 
soon  after  the  affair,  and  his  wife's  mind  became 
morbid  over  the  loss. 

"  Is  it  not  frightful,"  he  tells  Hilda,  "  that 
I  must  now  go  about  and  reckon  it  up,  pay  for 
it  ?  —  not  with  money,  but  with  human  happi- 
ness. And  not  merely  my  own  ;  with  that  of 
others,  too.  Do  you  see  that,  Hilda  ?  That  is 
what  my  artistic  success  has  cost  me  —  and 
others.  And  every  livelong  day  I  must  go 
about  and  see  the  price  paid  for  me  anew. 
Again,  and  again,  and  still  again." 

Several  fixed  ideas  haunt  this  man's  brain. 
He  has  become  moody,  even  surly,  because 
he  suspects  the  younger  generation  of  treason 
to  him.  As  he  supplanted  old  Brovik,  the 
broken-down  architect  in  his  employ,  so  he  fears 
in 


ICONOCLASTS 

that  the  son,  Knut  Brovik,  will  supplant  him, 
He  has,  being  a  man  loved  by  women,  won 
power  over  Knut's  betrothed.  He  believes 
that  he  has  the  rare  gift  of  willing  a  thing,  a 
telepathic  power.  He  is  not  mad  but  over- 
wrought, and  Hilda's  visit  is  in  the  nature  of 
a  rescue.  She  is  the  fairy  princess  who  is  to 
rescue  him  from  the  evil  Ego,  in  which  he  is 
imprisoned  as  if  in  an  ogre's  cage. 

Georg  Brandes  writes  of  The  Master  Builder: 
"  It  gives  at  one  and  the  same  time  a  sense  of 
enthralment  and  a  sense  of  deliverance.  This 
is  a  play  that  echoes  and  reechoes  in  our  minds 
long  after  we  have  read  it.  ...  Great  is  its  art, 
profound  and  rich  in  its  symbolic  language.  .  .  . 
Ibsen's  intention  has  been  to  give  us  by  means 
of  real  characters,  but  in  half-allegorical  form, 
the  tragedy  of  a  great  artist  who  has  passed  the 
prime  of  life." 

And  as  the  Danish  critic  aptly  remarks,  in 
his  —  Ibsen's  —  case,  "  Realism  and  symbolism 
have  thriven  very  well  together  for  more  than  a 
score  of  years.  The  contrasts  in  his  nature  in- 
cline him  at  once  to  fidelity,  to  fact,  and  to  mys- 
ticism." This  accounts  in  part  for  the  puzzling 
naivett  of  the  dialogue,  externally  so  simple  that 
it  delights  children.  Symbolic  figures  are  em- 
ployed throughout,  with  repetitions  of  motives 
as  in  a  symphonic  composition.  These  buttress 
up  a  structure  that  might  otherwise  dissolve 
in  fantastic  smoke,  so  aerial  is  its  thesis. 

The  various  acts  are  mainly  composed  of  a 

112 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

duologue  between  Hilda  and  Halvard.  Grad- 
ually she  obtains  by  her  terrible  intensity  and 
child-like  belief  in  him  complete  control  of  his 
self-absorbed  will.  She  drives  him  to  sign  a 
letter  of  praise  for  the  youthful  architect,  Knut, 
his  possible  rival ;  she  sends  the  other  girl 
away ;  she  is  kind  to  Aline,  the  unhappy  wife. 
Hilda  is,  as  Ibsen  said,  a  reversed  Hedda  Gabler. 
She  has  much  of  Rebekka  West  in  her,  with 
added  youth  and  a  nature  buoyant  enough  to 
triumph  over  the  Solness  ideals,  just  as  she 
would  have  compelled  Rosmersholm  to  go  down 
into  the  world  and  ennoble  men.  She  dis- 
covers Solness's  intention  to  build  no  more,  to 
climb  no  more  to  the  top  of  high  turrets.  It 
pains  her  to  think  that  her  part,  her  master 
builder,  the  incarnation  of  her  maidenly  dreams, 
dares  no  longer  mount  in  company  with  his 
ideals.  He  will  build  no  more  churches,  only 
houses  for  human  beings.  There  may  be  a 
castle  in  the  air  where  he  will  find  his  happi- 
ness—  with  Hilda. 

"  I'm  afraid  you  would  turn  dizzy  before  we 
got  halfway  up,"  she  says. 

"  Not  if  I  can  mount  in  hand  with  you, 
Hilda,"  he  replies. 

"Then  let  me  see  you  stand  free  and  high 
up."  But  alone,  he  must  mount  to  the  top  of 
the  new  tower.  She  urges  him  after  the  man- 
ner of  Peter  Skule  in  The  Pretenders,  as  did 
Rebekka  in  Rosmersholm.  She  will  not  stand 
between  Aline  and  Halvard,  for  she  now  knows 


ICONOCLASTS 

Aline.  Otherwise  her  moral  life  is  as  free  as 
Nietzsche's.  So  Solness  marches  up  the  scaf- 
folding, up  the  ladder  to  the  very  pinnacle,  for- 
getting that  life  has  but  one  pinnacle  to  scale, 
and  never  a  second.  Her  ecstasy  as  she 
watches  him  reach  the  top,  be  once  more  the 
old  genius,  his  real  self,  Halvard  Solness,  that 
she  cheers  him  and — he  falls.  Unconscious 
that  he  is  dead,  apparently  not  caring  for  the 
woe  brought  to  this  house,  Hilda  calls  out  until 
the  curtain  hides  her  from  view :  — 

"My  —  my  master  builder!"  And  he  is 
really  hers,  for  she  has  created  his  soul  anew. 
That  is  the  meaning  of  this  difficult  and  lovely 
fable,  —  though  he  fell  to  his  death,  Solness 
once  more  stood  alone  on  the  heights. 

Maurice  Maeterlinck  has  written  most  clearly 
on  the  theme  of  this  play. 

"  Some  time  ago,"  he  says  in  The  Treasure 
of  the  Humble  (translated  by  Alfred  Sutro), 
"  when  dealing  with  The  Master  Builder,  which 
is  the  one  of  Ibsen's  dramas  wherein  the  dia- 
logue of  the  second  degree  attains  the  deepest 
tragedy,  I  endeavoured,  unskilfully  enough,  to 
fit  its  secrets.  .  .  .  '  What  is  it,'  I  asked, '  what  is 
it  that,  in  The  Master  Builder,  the  poet  has  added 
to  life,  thereby  making  it  appear  so  strange,  so 
profound,  so  disquieting,  beneath  its  trivial  sur- 
face ?  The  discovery  is  not  easy,  and  the  old 
master  hides  from  us  more  than  one  secret.  It 
would  even  seem  as  though  what  he  has  wished 
to  say  were  but  little  by  the  side  of  what  he  has 
114 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

been  compelled  to  say.  He  has  freed  certain 
powers  of  the  soul  that  have  never  yet  been 
free,  and  it  may  be  that  these  have  held  him 
in  thrall.' 

"  '  Look  you,  Hilda,'  exclaims  Solness,  '  look 
you !  There  is  sorcery  in  you,  too,  as  there  is 
in  me.  It  is  this  sorcery  that  imposes  action  on 
the  powers  of  the  beyond.  And  we  have  to  yield 
to  it.  Whether  we  want  to  or  not,  we  must.  There 
is  sorcery  in  them  as  in  us  all.'  Hilda  and  Sol- 
ness  are,  I  believe,  the  first  characters  in  drama 
who  feel,  for  an  instant,  that  they  are  living  in 
the  atmosphere  of  the  soul ;  and  the  discovery 
of  this  essential  life  that  exists  in  them,  beyond 
the  life  of  every  day,  comes  fraught  with  terror. 
Hilda  and  Solness  are  two  souls  to  whom  a 
flash  has  revealed  their  situation  in  the  true 
life.  .  .  .  Their  conversation  resembles  noth- 
ing that  we  have  ever  heard,  inasmuch  as  the 
poet  has  endeavoured  to  blend  in  one  expres- 
sion both  the  inner  and  outer  dialogue.  A  new, 
indescribable  power  dominates  this  somnambu- 
listic drama.  All  that  is  said  therein  at  once 
hides  and  reveals  the  sources  of  an  unknown 
life." 

A  true  interior  drama  then  is  The  Master 
Builder,  full  of  the  overtones,  the  harmonies,  of 
mundane  existence.  Never  has  Ibsen's  art  been 
so  clairvoyant. 


115 


ICONOCLASTS 

XV 

LITTLE  EYOLF 
(1894) 

Little  Eyolf  is  a  moving  drama  of  resignation. 
It  does  not  sparkle  with  the  gem-like  brilliancy 
of  Hedda  Gabler,  it  is  not  so  swiftly  dramatic, 
nor  has  it  the  sombre  power  of  Ghosts,  nor  yet 
the  intimacy  of  A  Doll's  House;  but  it  is  pro- 
foundly pathetic,  and  the  means  employed  by 
Ibsen  to  produce  his  greatest  effects  are  simple 
in  the  extreme. 

The  story  is  this :  Alfred  Allmers  has  mar- 
ried a  girl  with  "gold  and  green  forests  "  ;  Rita 
is  her  name.  They  have  one  child,  Eyolf,  a 
sweet  little  boy,  but  lame  from  a  fall.  The 
sister  of  Allmers  is  named  Asta.  She  has  the 
true  savour  of  the  Ibsen  woman.  She  visits 
the  Allmers  at  their  country  home.  Alfred  has 
just  come  back  from  an  excursion  of  six  weeks 
in  the  mountains,  a  lonely,  self-imposed  tour. 
He  is  a  delicate  young  man  of  lofty  ideals,  not 
as  yet  realized  in  his  work.  There  is  something 
incomplete  about  him.  He  reminds  one  a  trifle 
of  Hedda  Gabler's  husband,  but  while  he  is 
about  as  talented  he  is  not  quite  so  dense.  He 
has  a  life  work,  a  volume  to  be  written,  which 
he  calls  Human  Responsibility.  But  he  is  a 
dreamer  and  has  done  little  with  it.  He  is 
wrapped  up  in  his  boy  and  dedicates  his  life  to 
him.  In  Little  Eyolf  shall  happily  blossom  all 
116 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

the  painful  buds  of  his  own  impotent  ambitions 
Alfred  Allmers  has  the  vision,  but  not  the  voice. 
He  is  a  type. 

But  his  wife,  a  full-blooded,  impetuous  woman, 
feels  that  she  is  being  denied  her  rights  through 
this  absorbing  passion  of  the  father  for  his  son. 
Her  nature  hungers  for  more  than  child  love. 
She  loves  her  husband  fiercely  and  fails  to 
understand  his  coolness.  Then  what  Ibsen  calls 
a  Rat- Wife  appears.  The  Rat- Wife  is  only  a 
woman  with  a  dog  that  goes  about  catching  and 
killing  rats.  Like  the  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin, 
she  plays  upon  a  little  pipe  and  the  rats  follow 
her  to  the  water  and  are  drowned.  "  Just  be- 
cause they  want  not  to — because  they're  so 
deadly  afraid  of  the  water — that's  why  they've 
got  to  plunge  into  it,"  says  this  horrid  old  bel- 
dame of  the  naughty  perverse  rodents.  She 
has  lured  other  game  —  human  game  —  in  her 
early  days,  and  Little  Eyolf  is  transfixed  by  her 
glittering  eye,  as  Coleridge  hath  it. 

He  follows  her  music  as  far  as  the  water  and 
is  drowned.  The  act  is  vital  and  searching  in 
its  analysis  of  character.  With  a  few  powerful 
strokes  we  get  Rita,  Asta,  Alfred,  the  Rat- Wife ; 
and  the  poor  lame  chap,  with  his  hankering  after 
a  soldier's  life,  is  very  sad. 

The  contention  between  Alfred  and  Rita, 
husband  and  wife,  in  the  next  act,  goes  to  the 
very  springs  of  their  souls.  We  learn  that  Rita 
is  jealous  of  her  little  boy — the  dead,  drowned 
boy,  whose  open,  upturned,  and  staring  eyes 
117 


ICONOCLASTS 

haunt  her.  Alfred  upbraids  her  for  her  neglect 
of  the  child,  and  declares  that  he  would  be  alive 
if  it  were  not  for  her  carelessness.  Being  lame 
he  was  not  taught  to  swim  like  other  lads,  and 
the  lameness  was  caused  by  a  fall  from  a  table. 
Rita  had  left  him  asleep  on  the  table,  safe  as  she 
thought,  and  then  the  accident  occurred.  The 
husband  protests  in  a  low  voice  that  he  too  for- 
got, "  You,  you,  you,  lured  me  to  you  —  I  forgot 
the  child  —  in  your  arms." 

The  two  lay  bare  their  very  thoughts.  Alfred 
has  really  never  loved  Rita.  Her  gold  and  green 
forests  and  her  beauty  led  him  to  marry  her. 
His  craze  for  the  boy  further  removed  him  from 
his  wife,  and  his  intellectual  life  was  not  con- 
ducive to  perfect  sympathy.  He  wished  his  lad 
to  be  a  prodigy.  He  meant  him  to  do  in  the 
world  all  the  father  had  not.  The  scene  is  a 
poignant  one.  The  mother,  very  human  woman 
of  considerable  temperament,  is  almost  broken- 
hearted at  the  double  loss.  The  child's  death 
was  a  blow,  but  her  husband's  dislike  drives  her 
frantic.  The  child,  young  as  he  was,  had  re- 
pelled her.  She  felt  barred  from  the  wealth  of 
love  that  flourished  between  father  and  child. 
She  resented  it.  She  resented  the  child's  love 
for  Asta,  for  Asta  proves  to  be  a  very  formi- 
dable factor  in  the  play.  She  is  jealous  of 
everybody. 

Alfred  Allmers  is  just  a  bit  of  a  prig,  self- 
conscious  like  most  people  with  a  self-imposed 
mission  in  life,  and  doubtless  possessing  in  full 
118 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

measure  the  scholar's  peevishness.  The  sister 
Asta  is  a  woman  with  an  awful  secret.  She  can 
give  her  suitor  Borgheim  no  hopes.  She  loves 
her  brother's  child  to  distraction,  and  she  knows 
of  her  mother's  dishonour.  To  Rita  she  is  not 
altogether  sympathetic.  She  takes  from  her 
Eyolf's  love,  the  love  he  should  have  bestowed 
on  his  mother,  and  she  is  evidently  held  in  high 
intellectual  favour  by  her  husband.  Naturally 
Rita,  who  has  lifted  up  both  the  Allmers  by  her 
wealth,  feels  all  this.  She  confesses  it,  too,  to 
her  husband.  He  has  become  morbid,  unmanned, 
hysterical,  since  the  accident.  All  his  hopes  are 
dashed  to  earth  and  shattered.  He  conceives  a 
horrible  fear  for  his  wife.  The  interview  is  a 
prolonged  one  and  intensely  painful.  It  is  writ- 
ten with  supreme  art  and  conveys  volumes  in 
half-uttered  sentences.  There  are  no  really  long 
speeches,  the  dialogue  being  crisp,  and  while 
the  action  is  not  rapid,  three  lives'  histories  are 
told  with  consummate  art  and  unabated  vigour. 
Asta  has  then  a  scene  with  her  brother.  She 
tells  him  that  she  is  not  his  sister ;  her  mother 
was  not  all  she  should  have  been  to  his  father. 
Brother  and  sister  face  each  other,  and  their 
parting  at  the  end  of  the  act  is  another  of  those 
strangely  affecting  climaxes  Ibsen  builds  so  well. 
There  is  never  shown  a  hint  of  warmer  feelings 
between  the  two  than  their  supposed  relation- 
ship warrants.  Eyolf,  Eyolf !  it  is  always  the 
spirit  of  the  child  that  directs  the  doings  of  this 
strange  yet  ordinary  group  of  human  beings. 
119 


ICONOCLASTS 

Allmers  later  suggests  suicide  to  his  wife,  and 
the  awful  contingency  is  discussed.  The  tone 
of  Little  Eyolf  is  distinctly  optimistic.  Hope  is 
preached  on  every  page.  Alfred  and  Rita  clasp 
hands  and  take  up  their  life  work  as  it  lies  be- 
fore them  in  the  squalid  village  that  belongs  to 
them.  Asta  goes  away  with  Borgheim,  leaving 
a  flavour  of  the  mystic  behind  her.  She  is  a 
true  Ibsen  girl.  Little  Eyolf  is  the  lodestar  of 
Allmers  ever  after.  The  play  seems  on  its 
surface  to  be  a  powerful  preachment  against 
dilettanteism.  Writing  a  book  about  Human 
Responsibility  is  all  well  enough,  but  out  in  the 
thick  of  the  fight  is  a  man's  place.  Assume  the 
responsibilities  of  common  humanity.  Do  not 
talk  about  them.  The  relations  of  parents  to 
children  are  fully  exploited,  and  the  lesson  read 
is  that  parents  owe  much  to  each  other,  quite 
as  much  as  to  their  children. 

Ibsen  has  girded  at  the  conventionalities  of 
the  marriage  relation  in  other  plays.  This  is  his 
Kreutzer  Sonata.  He  shows  the  selfishness  of 
a  parent's  love.  Rita  and  Alfred  confess  that 
they  never  truly  understood  Eyolf,  for  they  never 
knew  each  other.  It  is  a  profound  character 
study.  Ibsen  was  writing  for  another  theatre 
—  the  theatre  of  the  twentieth  century.  He  has, 
like  Maeterlinck,  abjured  the  drama  of  poison, 
mystery,  conflict,  violence,  aye,  even  the  drama 
of  heroism.  He  is  a  sorcerer  who  reveals  to  us 
the  commonplace  of  life  in  other  symbols.  We 
are  surrounded  by  mystery.  Life  at  its  lowest 
120 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

term  is  a  profound  mystery.     Science  may  tabu 
late,  but  the  poet  draws  aside  the  veil. 

To  dip  below  the  surface  of  Ibsen's  lines  is 
never  a  grateful  task,  especially  if  the  dramatic 
idea  is  first  taken  into  consideration.  Psychology 
must  play  the  principal  role  in  any  estimate  of 
Little  Eyolf  as  a  play  pure  and  simple.  Lan- 
guage is  symbolic,  though  with  Ibsen  the  single 
word  is  never  as  important  as  it  is  with  Maeter- 
linck. So  we  find  little  of  that  dripping  repe- 
tition, that  haunting  reiteration  which  the 
Belgian  writer  may  have  borrowed  from  Edgar 
Allan  Poe.  The  ellipsis  in  Ibsen  is  cunningly 
contrived,  he  subtly  foreshadows  coming  events, 
but  never  by  the  Word  Beautiful.  Little  Eyolf 
depicts  the  tyranny  of  passion. 

XVI 

JOHN  GABRIEL  BORKMAN 
(1896) 

There  is  in  John  Gabriel  Borkman  logical, 
well-knit  construction.  There  is  an  unflinching 
criticism  of  life  —  the  attitude  of  a  man  who 
began  life  as  a  poet  and  ends  it  as  a  realist ; 
there  is  a  strange  power,  unpleasant  power,  a 
meagre  intensity,  yet  unquestionable  intensity, 
and  a  genius  for  character-drawing  and  develop- 
ment of  character  that  is  just  short  of  the  mar- 
vellous. That  Ibsen  has  chosen  his  characters 
from  the  world  about  him  —  a  provincial,  narrow, 

121 


ICONOCLASTS 

hard,  cold  world,  —  is  a  commentary  on  his  truth- 
fulness, on  his  adherence  to  realistic  principles. 
The  curious  part  of  this  is  the  resemblance  his 
bourgeois  people  bear  to  the  bourgeois  of  nearly 
every  civilized  country. 

John  Gabriel  Borkman  is  a  play  of  great 
power,  of  a  frugal,  constructive  beauty,  and  in 
it  from  first  to  last  there  sounds  faintly  but  dis- 
tinctly an  antique  note.  There  is  also  something 
of  a  Hamlet  situation  in  the  position  of  the  young 
man  who  might  have  won  back  his  father's  king- 
dom, but  quite  like  a  modern  Hamlet  solved 
the  knotty  problem  by  going  away  to  Paris ;  any 
place,  far  away  from  the  bleak  northern  world 
where  lived  in  a  gloomy  house  his  father,  an 
ex-convict,  his  mother,  a  soured  fanatic,  and  his 
aunt,  an  old  maid  and  an  idealist. 

John  Gabriel  Borkman,  thirteen  years  previous 
to  the  opening  of  the  play,  had  been  a  gigantic 
speculator.  All  Norway,  all  the  world,  would 
have  been  at  his  feet  if  he  had  not  failed  at  the 
moment  when  success  seemed  assured.  By  his 
.downfall  hundreds  were  enmeshed  in  ruin,  and 
.the  man  went  to  prison  for  five  years,  leaving 
behind  a  heartbroken  wife  and  a  young  son. 
This  boy,  Erhart,  was  taken  away  and  raised  by 
a  rich  aunt,  but  is  .now  at  home,  where  he  has 
lived  for  eight  years  when  the  curtain  rises. 

Mrs.  Borkman  is  discovered  in  her  old-fash- 
ioned drawing-room,  in  the  house  saved  out  of 
the  wreckage  by  her  twin  sister,  Ella  Rentheim. 
She  is  longing  for  the  return  of  her  son  Erhart, 

122 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

in  whom  she  discerns  the  saviour  of  the  family. 
Her  sister  enters,  and  in  his  own  remarkable, 
sharp  way  Ibsen  lets  us  witness  the  spiritual 
tragedy  in  the  lives  of  the  pair.  They  both  love 
Erhart,  as  formerly  Ella  had  loved  his  father, 
John  Gabriel  Borkman.  The  women  hate  each 
other,  and  their  duel  is  fought  out  in  half -uttered 
sentences,  pregnant  pauses,  and  deadly  glances. 
It  is  the  perfection  of  dialogue-writing  and  clear 
exposition.  You  catch  dim  perspectives  of  the 
past,  the  treachery  of  the  husband  of  Mrs.  Bork- 
man, and  of  darker  depths  which  are  later  ex- 
plored. The  mother  —  oh,  such  a  pitiful,  harsh, 
sorrowful,  repellent  mother,  nursing  her  injuries 
until  they  become  hissing  vipers  in  her  bosom 

—  defies  her  sister  to  win  away  the  love  of  her 
son,  that  son  she  has  dedicated  to  the  mission  of 
rehabilitating  the  fortunes  and  good  name  of  the 
Borkmans.     With  cutting  humility  she  acknowl- 
edges that  she  eats  the  bread  of   her   sister's 
charity,  and   then  they  hear   footsteps.     Is   it 
Erhart  returning  ?     No ;  it  is  some  one  up  in  the 
long  gallery  overhead !     It  is  the  ex-convict,  ex- 
banker,  and  swindler,  John  Gabriel   Borkman, 
who  has  never  left  the  house  since  his  release 
eight  years  before.     Mrs.  Borkman  cries  :  — 

"  It  sometimes  seems  more  than  I  can  endure 

—  always  to  hear  him  up  there  walking,  walking. 
From  the  first  thing  in  the  morning  to  the  last 
thing  at  night.     And  one  hears  every  step  so 
plainly!     I  have  often  felt  as  if  I  had  a  sick 
wolf  up  there,  prowling  up  and  down  in  a  cage. 

123 


ICONOCLASTS 

Right  over  my  head,  too !  Listen !  there  he 
goes.  Up  and  down,  up  and  down,  the  wolf  is 
prowling." 

Then  Erhart,  a  lively  young  man  of  about 
twenty-three,  enters,  welcomes  his  aunt  affec- 
tionately, his  mother  carelessly.  With  him  is 
a  Mrs.  Wilton,  a  beautiful  young  woman,  whose 
husband  has  deserted  her.  The  pair  are  in  love, 
although  the  mother  does  not  quite  see  it.  Mrs. 
Wilton  wishes  Erhart  to  go  with  her  to  a  neigh- 
bor's house,  a  Mr.  Hinkle's,  but  his  duty  is  at  home 
and  she  leaves  him,  the  air  being  promise-crammed 
with  tantalizing  hopes  of  pleasure  and  caprice. 
The  young  man  soon  tires  of  the  bickerings  about 
him,  and  after  declaring  that  his  aunt  should  be 
in  bed  after  her  long  journey,  leaves  his  mother 
alone,  and  as  the  curtain  falls  she  exclaims : 
"  Erhart,  Erhart,  be  true  to  me !  Oh,  come 
home  and  help  your  mother!  For  I  can  bear 
this  life  no  longer." 

Her  mother's  heart  tells  her  that  her  boy  is 
being  drawn  away  from  her,  drawn  by  some 
force  she  cannot  analyze. 

In  Act  II  we  get  a  picture  of  the  "  sick  wolf 
up  there,"  John  Gabriel  Borkman  himself.  He 
is  one  of  Ibsen's  most  veracious  portraits.  He 
clings  with  unshaken  obstinacy  to  the  belief 
that  he  only  sinned  against  himself,  that  if  he 
had  been  given  time,  that  if  he  had  not  been 
betrayed  by  a  false  friend,  he  would  have  pulled 
through.  All  these  facts  are  deftly  brought  out 
by  conversation  with  the  half-pathetic,  half-ludi- 
124 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

crous  figure  of  an  humble  bank  clerk,  the  only 
one  of  Borkman's  friends  who  has  clung  to  him 
in  his  reverses,  although  Borkman  has  swept 
away  his  poor  earnings.  The  contrast  of  the 
pair  —  Borkman,  almost  satanic  in  his  pride  and 
his  belief  that  he  will  eventually  regain  his  posi- 
tion in  society,  and  the  feeble  aspirations  of  the 
poor  clerk,  who  is  a  poetaster  —  is  wonderfully 
managed.  There  is  a  quarrel,  and  Borkman  is 
left  to  his  gloomy  thoughts,  and  then  Ella  Ren- 
theim  comes  in  and  one  of  the  most  powerful 
situations  of  the  play  ensues. 

It  has  developed  that  Borkman  has  always 
loved  Ella,  but  gave  her  up  and  married  her 
sister  because  an  influential  man  who  could 
advance  his  interests  was  also  in  love  with  Ella. 
This  man,  not  being  able  to  marry  her,  betrayed 
Borkman  and  his  schemes.  His  name  is  Hinkle, 
and  at  his  very  house  that  night,  near  Christiania 
(the  scene  of  the  play),  Erhart  Borkman  is  enjoy- 
ing himself  with  Mrs.  Wilton  and  not  caring  a 
rap  for  his  sick-souled  father,  mother,  and  aunt. 

When  Borkman  finally  acknowledges  to  Ella 
that  in  his  lust  for  power  he  has  sacrificed  his 
love  of  her,  and  has  sacrificed  it  uselessly,  she 
turns  on  him  and  cries  "  Criminal !  "  She  goes 
on :  — 

"  You  are  a  murderer  and  you  have  committed 
the  one  mortal  sin.  .  .  .  You  have  killed  the 
love  life  in  me.  Do  you  understand  what  that 
means  ?  The  Bible  speaks  of  a  mysterious  sin 
for  which  there  is  no  forgiveness.  I  have  never 
125 


ICONOCLASTS 

understood  what  it  could  be ;  but  now  I  under- 
stand. The  great,  unpardonable  sin  is  to  murder 
the  love  life  in  a  human  soul.  .  .  .  You  have 
done  that.  I  have  never  rightfully  understood 
until  this  evening  what  has  really  happened  to 
me.  That  you  deserted  me  and  turned  to  Gun- 
hild  instead  —  I  took  that  to  be  mere  common 
fickleness  on  your  part,  and  the  result  of  heart- 
less scheming  on  hers.  I  almost  think  I  despise 
you  a  little  in  spite  of  everything.  But  now  I 
see  it !  You  deserted  the  woman  you  loved ! 
Me,  me,  me!  What  you  held  dearest  in  the 
world  you  were  ready  to  barter  away  for  gain. 
That  is  the  double  murder  you  have  committed ! 
The  murder  of  your  own  soul  and  mine !  " 

And  again,  "  You  have  cheated  me  of  a 
mother's  joy  and  happiness  in  life  —  and  a 
mother's  sorrows  and  tears  as  well." 

Then  Ella  tells  Borkman  that  sorrow  and 
disease  have  broken  her  down,  and  she  intends 
leaving  her  fortune  to  Erhart,  the  only  one  she 
loves ;  her  spiritual  son,  but  he  must  give  up 
the  name  of  Borkman  and  take  that  of  Ren- 
theim.  Mrs.  Borkman  appears  at  this  juncture, 
and  there  is  another  clash  as  the  curtain  falls  on 
three  wretched  people. 

Act  III  treads  closely  on  the  heels  of  the 
preceding  one,  for  the  action  of  the  entire  play 
takes  place  during  one  dull  winter's  evening;: 
and  if  there  is  unity  of  time,  unity  of  place, 
there  is  unity  of  character,  for  like  some  vast 
but  closely  knitted  polyphonic  composition,  the 
126 


HENRIK    IBSEN 

piece  contains  not  a  line,  not  a  character,  that 
is  wasted  or  undeveloped.  It  is  as  far  as  form 
simply  magnificent ;  an  object  lesson  to  young 
dramatists.  But  as  to  its  theme ;  ah,  I,  too, 
would  be  sorry  to  see  our  stage  always  filled 
with  these  crabbed,  sour,  mean,  loveless,  and 
sad-visaged  people !  Little  wonder  that  joyous 
Erhart  Borkman,  the  selfish  son  of  a  union  bar- 
ren of  love,  goes  away  in  Act  III,  after  a  cli- 
max that  simply  cuts  into  your  nerves.  Father 
and  mother  —  oh,  the  agony  of  that  poor,  old, 
weak,  deserted  woman  —  appeal  to  him,  but 
with  Mrs.  Wilton  and  a  young  girl,  a  daughter 
of  the  old  clerk,  he  goes  out  into  the  world  to 
see  life,  to  seek  love,  to  enjoy,  to  enjoy,  to  enjoy  ! 
It  is  the  new  laughing  at  the  despair  of  the  old, 
and  the  curtain  falls  on  a  group  that  seems 
frozen  with  antique  grief. 

Of  Act  IV  and  Borkman's  death  —  his  soul 
had  been  dead  since  he  went  to  prison  —  I  shall 
say  but  little.  The  end  is  silver-tipped  with 
symbolical  hintings,  but  there  is  nothing  dark 
or  devious  for  even  the  commonest  comprehen- 
sion. 

The  spiritual  director  of  the  Theatre  de 
1'CEuvre,  M.  Lugne-Poe,  once  wrote  of  Ibsen 
thus:  — 

"  I  do  not  know  any  one  but  M.  August 
Ehrhard  who  has,  with  such  painstaking  erudi- 
tion, disengaged  Ibsen's  thought  from  his  prin- 
cipal works.  And  although  the  learned  critic 
committed  the  great  fault  of  never  attempting 
127 


ICONOCLASTS 

one  single  time  to  assimilate  the  rugged  thought 
of  the  great  dramaturge,  it  must,  nevertheless, 
be  allowed  his  conclusions  were  happy.  I  may 
cite  this  phrase  from  the  letter  to  Ibsen  which 
terminates  his  volume,  '  In  truth  you  will  renew 
the  miracle  of  Sophocles  —  at  eighty  years  of 
age  you  will  give  us  a  new  CEdipus.' 

"To-day  that  which  Ehrhard  prophesied  is 
already  three-quarters  realized.  Since  Hedda 
Gabler,  Ibsen  has  given  us  The  Master  Builder, 
that  heroic  drama  of  pride,  and  John  Gabriel 
Borkman,  the  secular  legend  of  the  human 
chimera." 

Even  an  indifferent  performance  which  I  saw 
at  the  Schiller  Theatre,  Berlin,  could  not  quite 
destroy  the  impression  of  a  wounded  Titan 
struggling  against  fate.  John  Gabriel  Borkman 
is  a  prodigious  figure,  a  second  Mercadet,  but 
fashioned  by  a  Balzac  of  the  theatre. 


XVII 

WHEN   WE   DEAD  AWAKE 

DRAMATIC  EPILOGUE 

(1899) 

Mr.  William  Archer  sees  in  this  closing  drama 
of  the  social  series  little  else  than  a  resusci- 
tation of  the  characters  and  motives  that  have 
done  duty  in  his  earlier  plays.  It  is  true  that 
there  is  much  familiar  music,  that  the  themes 
128 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

have  been  treated  in  the  previous  works  ;  never- 
theless the  variation  is  of  enthralling  interest. 
This  epilogue  is  closely  related  to  The  Master 
Builder.  Solness  the  architect  is  differentiated 
from  Arnold  Rubek,  the  sculptor  in  character ; 
but  both  men  are  successful  artists ;  both  men 
have  failed  in  the  one  achievement  worth  the 
while  —  love.  As  in  Brand,  Rubek  goes  to  the 
snow-covered  heights  with  his  only  love  — • 
Brand's  was  an  ideal ;  Rubek's  is  a  woman  — 
and  the  avalanche  sweeps  both  to  eternity. 
The  Dens  caritatis,  whose  voice  thunders  in 
the  ears  of  the  dying  Brand,  is  in  the  epilogue 
the  voice  of  the  sister  of  mercy  who  cries, 
Pax  vobisc2im,  as  Rubek  and  Irene  are  whirled 
away. 

Ibsen,  always  disdainful  of  stage  setttings, 
evidently  experienced  a  change  of  mind,  for, 
following  Richard  Wagner's  example,  he  makes 
some  exceedingly  severe  demands  upon  the  in- 
genuity of  the  stage  manager,  beginning  with 
The  Lady  from  the  Sea  and  John  Gabriel 
Borkman. 

The  story  of  When  We  Dead  Awake  is 
simplicity  itself.  Arnold  Rubek  is  a  famous 
sculptor,  in  middle  years  married  to  Maja,  a 
young  woman  full  of  the  joy  of  life.  The  union 
proves  unhappy.  She  is  frivolous ;  he  is  failing 
as  an  artist.  Years  before  he  had  designed  his 
masterwork,  The  Day  of  Resurrection,  and  his 
model  was  the  most  beautiful  woman  in  the 
world.  The  artist  conquered  the  man  and  he 
129 


ICONOCLASTS 

allowed  Irene  to  leave  him,  though  she  adored 
him.  With  her  departure  his  fount  of  inspira- 
tion dried  up.  He  made  portrait  busts  and 
revenged  himself  on  the  indifferent  world  by 
maliciously  modelling  resemblances  to  ignoble 
animals  in  the  countenances  of  his  sitters  — 
the  pig,  the  goat,  the  ape,  the  hawk,  were 
faintly  suggested.  This  very  modern  trait  has 
been  paralleled  in  the  case  of  a  celebrated 
painter  of  our  times.  Henry  James,  in  his  own 
faultless  way,  has  told  the  story  in  The  Liar. 

As  is  the  case  with  the  Ibsen  plays,  this 
train  of  happenings  leads  up  to  the  first  act  at 
a  northern  watering-place.  Rubek  and  Maja 
tell  each  other  the  truth  of  their  mutual  bore- 
dom. Then  Irene  comes  upon  the  scene,  a 
sinister  apparition.  She  is  half  mad  and  is 
watched  by  a  sister  of  mercy.  She  encounters 
Rubek,  and  the  story  of  her  love,  which  led  to 
insanity,  comes  out.  He  sees  that  his  art  has 
blinded  him  to  his  real  happiness.  Like  Ella 
Rentheim  in  John  Gabriel  Borkman,  Irene 
accuses  him  savagely  of  murdering  her  love 
life  through  neglect.  Maja  has  gone  off  with 
Ulfheim,  a  savage  brute  of  a  hunter,  and  to- 
gether Rubek  and  Irene  seek  to  attain  the 
heights.  But  the  inexorable  law  of  their  being 
bars  the  way.  Only  once  in  a  lifetime  is  it 
vouchsafed  to  a  man  or  a  woman  to  touch  the 
tall  stars,  and  so  they  perish,  but  not  before 
Rubek  has  cast  off  his  life  lie. 

Eduard  Brandes,  the  brother  of  the  better 
130 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

known   Georg,   himself  a  critic  and  dramatist, 
has  uttered  eloquent  words  about  this  drama  :  — 

Unquestionably,  there  will  be  many  objections 
made  against  this  magnificent  drama  because  the 
high-sounding  prose  at  times  may  seem  vulnerable 
to  the  attack  of  logical  analysis.  And  it  is  quite 
certain  that  the  objections  will  gather  themselves 
into  the  pertinent  question,  Why  did  Henrik  Ibsen 
show  Irene  as  insane  and  why  does  he  let  Rubek, 
who  is  not  insane,  prefer  the  abnormal  woman  to  the 
beautiful  and  sensible  Maja  ? 

To  this  may  be  answered,  If  Ibsen  with  such 
violence  desired  to  emphasize  that  life  in  its  entirety, 
even  the  most  artistic,  is  to  be  counted  as  death, 
and  that  only  the  life  of  love  is  real  love,  to  both 
Irene  and  Maja,  then  he  was  forced  to  employ  the 
most  drastic  pictures  of  the  kind  of  death  that  life 
without  love  assuredly  is.  Insanity,  without  a  doubt, 
is  both  mental  and  physical  death :  though  the 
insane  may  exist,  yet  humanity  does  not  consider 
such  existence  —  life. 

Had  not  Irene  stood  there,  so  heartbroken,  so 
ill  in  mind  and  evil,  so  desirous  and  yet  so  afraid, 
with  the  black  shadow  of  cell  and  restraint  in  her 
wake,  the  lesson  of  the  play  would  not  be  too  plain, 
Without  love  —  no  life. 

It  is  Irene,  of  course,  who  is  the  star  character  in 
the  play.  It  is  far  from  being  the  undecisive  Rubek 
who  not  until  the  hour  of  his  death  understood  the 
love  which  Irene  offered  him,  which  in  Maja's  case 
was  confined  to  the  customs  of  conventional  mar- 
.riage. 

That    Henrik    Ibsen    stands    untouched  by  his 


ICONOCLASTS 

weight  of  years,  this  drama  will  ere  long  announce 
to  the  entire  world.  It  is  quite  true  that  the  struc- 
ture of  the  play  cannot  be  analyzed  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment.  The  construction  embodies  a  stage 
setting  which  will  enhance  the  worth  of  the  drama. 
Almost  with  the  identical  progress  which  Irene  and 
Rubek  make  toward  the  mountain  top  the  acts  un- 
fold themselves  lucidly  and  are  entirely  comprehen- 
sible. The  more  the  psychological  problem  is 
studied  the  better  will  it  be  understood  why  Ibsen 
is  called  great. 

When  We  Dead  Awake  is  a  master's  work  and  a 
masterpiece.  Like  none  other  is  Ibsen — so  grand, 
so  mystical,  and  yet  so  entirely  in  agreement  with 
the  organic  make-up  of  humanity.  From  the  peak 
of  the  mountain  he  speaks  to  us,  aged  as  to  years, 
youthful  in  deed  and  daring.  There  is  but  one  ruler, 
says  Henrik  Ibsen :  the  great  Eros,  and  the  poet  is 
his  prophet ! 

When  We  Dead  Awake  ends  the  cycle  of 
the  noble  prose  dramas  of  Henrik  Ibsen.  De- 
spite Mr.  Archer's  criticism  the  play  shows 
little  falling  off  in  intensity,  even  if  the  motives 
are  thrice  familiar.  To  will  greatly  is  the  touch- 
stone of  life,  to  will  when  you  know  that  you 
are  hedged  in  by  overmastering  destiny ;  to 
dare,  though  you  know  that  free  will  is  one  of 
life's  darling  illusions  —  that  is  success  in  life. 

To  thy  own  self  be  true, 

said  Shakespeare,  and  no  one  has  said  it  with 
such  tragic  intensity  since  him  as  has  Henrik 
Ibsen. 

132 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

"  It  has  been  a  veritable  misfortune  for  JEs- 
thetics  that  the  word  '  drama '  has  always  been 
translated  by  'action,' "  wrote  Nietzsche.  "Wag- 
ner is  not  the  only  one  who  errs  here ;  all  the 
world  is  still  in  error  about  the  matter;  even 
the  philologists  ought  to  know  better.  The 
ancient  drama  had  grand  pathetic  scenes  in 
view ;  it  first  excluded  action  (relegated  it  pre- 
vious to  the  commencement,  or  behind  the 
scene).  The  word  '  drama '  is  of  Doric  origin, 
and  according  to  Dorian  usage  signifies  '  event,' 
'  history,'  both  words  in  a  hieratic  sense.  The 
oldest  drama  represented  local  legend,  the  '  sa- 
cred history,'  on  which  the  establishment  of  the 
cult  rested  (consequently  no  doing  but  a  hap- 
pening .  .  .)." 

And  elsewhere  Nietzsche  declares :  "  The  affir- 
mation of  life,  even  in  its  most  unfamiliar  and 
most  severe  problems,  the  will  to  live  life,  enjoy- 
ing its  own  inexhaustibility  in  the  sacrifice  of  its 
highest  types — that  is  what  I  call  Dionysian,  that 
is  what  I  divined  as  the  bridge  to  a  psychology  of 
the  tragic  poet.  Not  in  order  to  get  rid  of  terror 
and  pity,  not  to  purify  from  a,  dangerous  passion 
by  its  vehement  discharge  (it  was  thus  that 
Aristotle  understood  it),  but  beyond  terror  and 
pity,  to  realize  in  fact  the  eternal  delight  of  be- 
coming —  that  delight  which  even  involves  in 
itself  the/0j  of  annihilation" 

He  also  pictures  the  great  tragic  artist  offer- 
ing a  draught  of  sweetest  cruelty  to  heroic  men. 
Readers  interested  should  study  Lessing  in  his 
133 


ICONOCLASTS 

Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  Schopenhauer's  essay 
on  Tragedy,  and  Nietzsche's  valuable  contribu- 
tion to  the  discussion,  his  early  work,  The  Birth 
of  Tragedy.  The  latter  extols  the  Dionysian 
spirit  of  the  drama  —  its  ecstasy  and  its  trium- 
phant affirmation  of  life  the  eternal.  Walter 
Pater  should  be  consulted  on  the  same  lofty 
theme. 

In  form  the  perfected  Ibsen  tragedy  follows 
Sophocles :  anterior  to  the  rising  of  the  curtain 
the  various  motives  have  developed  and  collided 
in  the  dark  chamber  of  the  dramatist's  brain. 
They  are  then  incarnated  for  the  spectator  as 
they  near  their  catastrophe ;  thus  the  most  rigid 
economy  of  effects  is  practised,  the  three  unities 
preached  by  Boileau  are  set  before  us  with 
unerring  logic.  It  is  all  in  a  single  picture,  this 
denouement  of  his  character's  silent  years.  The 
method  has  its  drawbacks,  yet  there  is  no  deny- 
ing its  intensity,  which  like  the  fiery  garment 
of  Nessus  envelops  the  dramatist's  unhappy 
men  and  women.  Determinate  as  is  the  motiva- 
tion of  these  dramas,  there  is  allowed  the  inter- 
val for  action  that  might  be  described  by  the 
tick  of  the  pendulum,  —  diastole,  systole,  ebb, 
and  flow.  But  within  that  tiny  mental  territory 
man  is  monarch  of  his  acts ;  moreover,  as  Ernest 
Renan  suggests,  "  What  we  call  infinite  time  is, 
perhaps,  a  minute  between  two  miracles."  Man 
dances  on  the  rope  of  the  present  between  the 
past  and  the  future,  says  Nietzsche ;  the  spec- 
tacle, brief  as  it  is,  has  been  recorded  by  Ibsen, 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

Renan,  who  anticipated  Nietzsche  by  his  procla- 
mation that  man  should  be  virtuous  for  virtue's 
sake  alone,  without  regard  for  rewards  attendant 
upon  its  performance,  has  also  written  in  his 
preface  to  Caliban  (1878):  — 

"  Man  sees  clearly  at  the  hour  which  is  strik- 
ing that  he  will  never  know  anything  of  the 
supreme  cause  of  the  universe,  or  of  his  own 
destiny.  Nevertheless  he  wishes  to  be  talked 
to  about  all  that."  And  Ibsen  has  talked  to  us 
much  about  all  these  things,  following  Goethe's 
axiom  that  "no  real  circumstance  is  unpoetic 
so  long  as  the  poet  knows  how  to  use  it." 
The  theatre  director  in  Faust  remarks,  "He 
who  brings  much,  brings  something  to  every 
one." 

Octave  Uzanne  wrote,  "  People  the  orchestra 
and  galleries  of  a  theatre  with  a  thousand  Renans 
and  a  thousand  Herbert  Spencers,  and  the  com- 
bination of  these  two  thousand  brains  of  genius 
will  not  produce  aught  but  the  soul  of  a  con- 
cierge." 

So  much  for  the  power  of  collectivity.  This 
theme  which  Gustave  Le  Bon  has  treated  in 
The  Mob  and  The  Psychology  of  the  Peoples 
—  literally  a  drag-net  psychology  —  may  be 
found  lucidly  discussed  in  Mr.  A.  B.  Walkley's 
Dramatic  Criticism.  The  modern  audience, 
he  says,  is  no  longer  a  great  baby,  like  the 
mediaeval  one,  but  an  intelligent  adult.  "  On 
this  crowd  depends  our  future  hopes  of  the 
stage." 


ICONOCLASTS 

With  all  the  authorities,  apologists,  and  pane 
gyrists,  Ibsen  remains  a  difficult  nut  to  crack. 
His  perversities  of  execution,  aberrations  in  sen- 
timent, contrarieties,  and  monumental  obstinacy 
are  too  much  for  the  average  commentator's 
nerves  —  why,  then,  should  he  be  enjoyed  by  the 
public  when  doctors  of  the  drama  disagree? 
His  warmest  admirers  deny  him  the  gift  of 
humour,  but  we  believe  that  he  is  the  greatest 
humorist,  as  well  as  dramatist,  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  No  man,  not  even  Browning, 
has  kept  such  rigid  features  in  the  very  face  of 
idiotic  abuse  and  still  more  silly  praise.  Not  a 
sense  of  humour !  After  A  Doll's  House  came 
Ghosts,  totally  contravening  the  thesis,  or  sup- 
posed thesis,  of  that  problem  play ;  after  Ghosts, 
An  Enemy  of  the  People,  which  declared  for  the 
rights  of  the  individual;  after  this  piece  the  mad- 
dening and  angular  ironies  of  The  Wild  Duck, 
in  which  he  mocks  himself,  his  theories;  and 
then  as  if  to  explode  the  whole  Ibsen  mine, 
Rosmersholm  appeared.  Therein  the  reformer, 
whether  idealist  or  of  the  ordinary  peddling 
political  stripe,  is  mercilessly  flayed,  and  Re- 
bekka  West,  his  wonderful  incarnation  of 
passion,  deceits,  femininity,  and  renunciation, 
sacrifices  her  life  to  a  false  ideal,  to  "  Rosmers- 
holm ideals,"  and  mocks  herself  as  she  joins 
in  the  double  suicide.  No  humour!  What, 
then,  of  Hedda  Gabler,  the  young  woman  of 
to-day;  shallow-cultured,  her  religious  under- 
pinning gone,  vacillating,  cerebral,  all  nerves 
136 


HENRIK   IBSEN 

full  of  a  Bashkirtseff-like  charm,  this  Hedda 
who  is  so  modern,  who  peeps  over  moral  preci- 
pices, shudders  and  peeps  again — what  precon- 
ceived theories  of  Ibsen  did  Hedda  not  upset  ? 

Followed  the  fantastic  Master  Builder,  Little 
Eyolf,  John  Gabriel  Borkman,  and  When  We 
Dead  Awake,  each  mutually  destructive  of  what 
we  supposed  Ibsen  stood  for,  destructive  of  the 
fumbling  decadent  that  spite  depicts  him.  Not 
a  humorist !  Why,  Aristophanes,  Jonathan 
Swift,  Dumas  fils,  and  Calvin  (who  was  fond  of 
roasting  his  religious  foes)  rolled  into  one  is 
about  the  happiest  formula  we  can  express  for 
the  tense-lipped  old  humorist  of  Norway ! 

Like  the  John  Henry  Newman  of  Apologia 
Pro  Vita  Sua,  his  chief  concern  is  with  the  soul. 
To  call  him  hard  names  is  to  betray  the  inner 
anxieties  that  assail  us  at  some  time  of  our  ex- 
istence. "What  if  this  man  were  telling  the 
truth?"  we  shiveringly  ask.  Then  we  incon- 
tinently proceed  to  stone  him  to  death  with 
scabrous  adjectives ! 

Ibsen  never  condescended  to  newspaper  po- 
lemics—  usually  the  refuge  of  second-rate  men. 
And  his  scorn  and  cruelty  are  but  a  disguised 
kindness ;  if  he  lays  bare  our  rickety  social  sys- 
tems, our  buckram  politics,  exposes  the  falsetto 
of  our  ideals,  the  flabbiness  of  our  culture,  the 
cowardice  of  our  ethics,  the  sleek  optimism  of 
our  public  counsellors,  and  the  dry  rot  of  love- 
less marriage,  it  is  to  blazon  our  moral  maladies 
that  we  may  seek  their  cure. 
137 


ICONOCLASTS 

Like  John  Knox  with  Mary  Stuart,  he  rudely 
raps  at  the  door  of  our  hearts,  bidding  us  awaken 
and  open  them.  He  is  a  voice  crying  in  the 
wilderness  of  shams  —  shams  social,  the  shams 
of  sentiment,  of  money-getting.  And  he  some- 
times fails  to  discriminate  the  sheep  and  goats, 
tweaking  the  foolish,  self-satisfied  noses  of  the 
former  so  sadly,  that  he  has  been  accused  of 
mixing  his  moral  values.  But  like  Tennyson 
he  knows  that  there  is  often  honest  faith  in 
doubt.  His  words  and  works  may  be  compared 
to  that  serpent  of  brass  erected  by  Moses  in  the 
midst  of  his  ailing  nation,  which  was  at  once  a 
symbol  and  a  prophylactic. 

Ibsen,  the  cunning  contriver  of  sinewy,  vital 
dramas,  swift  in  action,  with  all  extraneous  flesh 
lopped  away  like  the  muscular  figure  of  a  Greek 
athlete,  this  Ibsen  of  overarching  poetic  power, 
is  a  man  disdainful  of  our  praise  or  our  blame, 
knowing,  with  the  subtle  prevision  of  genius, 
that  one  day  the  world  will  go  to  him  for  the 
consolations  of  his  austere  art. 


138 


II 

AUGUST  STRINDBERG 

To  search  for  God  and  to  find  the  Devil !  that  is  what 
happened  to  me.  —  STRINDBERG'S  Inferno. 

A  CRITIC  is  a  man  who  expects  miracles.  So 
it  has  become  the  general  practice  to  ignore 
a  poet  in  his  totality  and  seek  only  for  isolated 
traits.  And  then  the  trouble  we  take  to  search 
for  what  a  man  is  not  :  the  lack  of  humour  in 
Shelley,  the  lack  of  spirituality  in  Byron,  the 
lack  of  sanity  in  Nietzsche,  the  lack  of  melody 
in  Richard  Strauss !  The  case  of  Johann 
August  Strindberg  has  also  proved  tempting  to 
critical  head-hunters.  Long  before  we  read  his 
books  we  knew  of  his  neurasthenia,  and  after 
his  reputation  as  a  many-sided  man  of  genius 
had  been  established  in  Europe  his  matrimonial 
affairs  were  employed  as  an  Exhibit  A  to  divorce 
him  from  public  and  critical  favour.  And  yet 
this  poet,  romancer,  and  novelist,  who  has 
created  such  a  profusion  of  types  as  to  be  called 
"  The  Shakespeare  of  Sweden,"  this  more  than 
countryman  of  Swedenborg  in  his  powers  of 
intense  vision,  this  seer  and  chemist,  possesses 
such  a  robust,  tangible  personality  that  the  world 
139 


ICONOCLASTS 

is  hardly  to  be  censured  for  being  curious  about 
the  man  before  studying  his  works. 

His  stock  stems  from  the  very  soil  of  Sweden. 
In  the  seventeenth  century  his  ancestors  were 
living  in  the  little  village  of  Strinne.  Tremen- 
dous in  physique  and  intermingled  with  clerical 
strains,  Strindberg  inherits  both  his  big  frame 
and  sensitive  conscience  from  his  mixed  fore- 
bears. His  is  the  sanguine  scepticism  like  that 
of  Renan,  Anatole  France,  Barres,  Bernard 
Shaw,  as  Rene  Schickele  has  suggested.  A 
simple  pagan  he  is  not ;  nor  would  his  particular 
case  have  been  so  complicated.  His  lyric  pes- 
simism and  his  gift  of  distilling  his  bitter  experi- 
ences into  a  tale  or  a  play  are  to-day  merged 
in  the  broad  currents  of  his  historical  dramas 
and  socialistic  novels.  Even  his  misogyny  has 
become  ameliorated,  —  those  episodes  in  which 
are  crystallized  the  petty  misery  of  a  married 
couple,  —  unpaid  debts,  unloved  children,  the 
bailiff  knocking  at  the  back  door !  —  let  us 
believe  that  they,  too,  were  but  a  phase  of  his 
development.  Played  in  Germany  and  France,  — 
Zola  hailed  his  play,  Married,  as  remarkable, 
and  its  author  as  a  confrere,  —  popular  in 
Russia,  recognized  though  not  without  many 
years  of  unjust  probation,  Strindberg  may  be 
said  to  have  achieved  what  he  set  out  to  do,  — 
"to  search  for  God  and  find  the  devil,"  and  once 
more  to  find  his  God. 

Herr  Emil  Schering,  the  devoted  German 
translator  of  Strindberg,  related  to  me  this  anec- 
140 


AUGUST   STRINDBERG 

dote.  On  the  writing-desk  of  Ibsen  there  stands, 
or  stood,  a  photograph  of  Strindberg  the  Swede, 
once  Ibsen's  foe.  To  a  visitor's  surprise,  Ibsen, 
after  gazing  in  silence  for  some  time  at  the 
picture,  said,  "  There  is  one  who  will  be  greater 
than  I." 

Whether  this  story  be  true  or  not  Strindberg 
is  a  man  of  genius,  a  crazy  one  at  times,  fascinat- 
ing as  a  writer  and  interesting  as  a  psychiatric 
study.  And  he  answers  to  the  chief  test  of  the 
dramatist  —  he  is  a  prime  creator  of  character. 
Edmund  Gosse  pronounced  him  to  be  "  certainly 
the  most  remarkable  creative  talent  started  by 
the  philosophy  of  Nietzsche  "  ;  and  in  speaking 
of  his  novel,  Inferno,  he  says  that  it  "  is  a  record 
of  wretchedness  and  superstition  and  squalor, 
told  by  a  maniac  who  is  a  positive  Lucifer  of  the 
intellect.  ...  in  France  not  only  has  he  a 
large  following,  but  he  exercises  a  positive  in- 
fluence." Yet  this  erratic  man  has  planned 
technical  revolutions  for  the  dramatic  stage  —  on 
the  mechanical  as  well  as  the  spiritual  side  —  that 
are  as  startling  as  were  Richard  Wagner's  in  the 
music  drama.  It  is  not  necessary  here  to  de- 
scribe his  scheme  for  presenting  his  long  his- 
torical dramas  without  a  change  of  front  scene. 

Strindberg  is  a  man  with  an  abnormal  emo- 
tional temperament  which  he  has  often  allowed 
to  master  his  judgment.  If  he  had  been  a  com- 
poser, while  his  symphonies  would  have  un- 
doubtedly provoked  abuse,  they  would  not  have 
scandalized  moralists  —  such  is  the  peculiar 
141 


ICONOCLASTS 

vagueness  of  that  art  in  the  domain  of  articu- 
late thought.  Some  day  the  tone-symbols  ot 
music  will  become  a  part  of  our  consciousness, 
and  then  we  may  confidently  expect  arrests, 
prosecutions,  transportations,  perhaps  execu- 
tion Sc  Luckily  for  the  bold  and  imaginative 
thinkers,  music  remains  the  only  art,  the  last 
sanctuary  wherein  originality  may  reveal  itself 
in  the  face  of  fools  and  not  pierce  their  mental 
opacity. 

August  Strindberg  is  a  name  little  known  to 
the  English  stage  or  reading  public.  Yet  his 
dramatic  work  dates  back  to  1872,  when 
Meister  Olaf  was  composed.  In  this  youthful 
essay  he  anticipated  by  seven  years  the  Nora 
type  presented  by  Ibsen.  His  first  novel  ap- 
peared in  1879,  and  in  1884,  when  Giftas  was 
published,  the  stories  in  this  violent  book  nearly 
sent  him  to  the  Stockholm  jail.  It  was  1888  be- 
fore Grafin  Julie  was  put  forth,  and  this  play 
originally  in  three  acts  brought  Strindberg  Euro- 
pean fame.  Glaubiger,  in  1889,  confirmed  the 
first  critical  impression  that  a  writer  and  thinker 
of  a  high  order  was  come.  Strindberg's  career 
has  been  a  disordered  one.  Poverty  interrupted 
his  studies  at  the  Upsala  University,  made  him 
a  "  super  "  in  a  theatre,  and  drove  him  to  jour- 
nalism, and  to  become  a  doctor's  assistant.  Al- 
ways unhappy  in  his  relation  with  women,  often 
quite  mad,  and  usually  living  on  the  treacherous 
borderland  of  hallucination,  his  existence  has 
been  fevered  and  miserable,  though  his  successes 
142 


AUGUST    STRINDBERG 

are  brilliant.  Sanity  has  not  been  his  cardinal 
quality  —  he  has  more  than  once  gone  to  the 
asylum,  emerging  in  a  few  months  cured,  and, 
remarkable  as  it  sounds,  remembering  the  de- 
tails of  his  mania.  Detraqut,  sick  and  cracked, 
he  nevertheless  plunged  into  the  study  of 
chemistry,  searching  for  a  universal  solvent  —  a 
mad  dream  that  would  interest  Balzac.  Ideas 
almost  consumed  the  brain  of  this  cerebral. 

But  hard  work  calmed  his  nerves,  as  was  the 
case  with  Dostoievsky.  Strindberg's  scientific 
investigations  are  full  of  the  flashes  of  divination 
that  at  times  lend  value  to  the  theories  of  imagi- 
native men.  He  has  written  an  Introduction  a 
une  Chimie  unitaire,  which  was  favourably  re- 
ceived. It  was  a  conclusion  foregone  that  his 
impulsive  and  overwrought  emotional  nature 
would  lead  him  into  extravagances.  Inferno 
and  the  double  drama,  Nach  Damaskus,  re- 
veal his  eroticism,  his  exasperated  imagination, 
his  harsh  atheism.  He  has  confessed  in  one  of 
his  autobiographical  outpourings  —  for  he  lays 
bare  his  soul  with  the  same  na'fvete  as  did  Tolstoy 
and  Rousseau  —  that  in  his  youth  he  was  a  be- 
liever, that  the  modulation  to  free-thinking  and 
rank  atheism  was  an  easy  one.  Then,  after  a 
period  of  turbulence,  he  became  the  dispassionate 
ponderer ;  and  finally  socialism,  with  its  remote 
horizons,  its  heroisms,  its  substitution  of  human- 
ity for  the  old  gods,  caught  his  wandering  soul. 

He  lives  no  longer  in  Paris,  a  whirlpool  for  a 
man  of  his  nature,  and  since  his  third  marriage, 


ICONOCLASTS 

to  Harriet  Bosse,  the  popular  Swedish  actress, 
called  by  her  admirers  the  "  Scandinavian 
Duse,"  he  has  resided  in  Stockholm.  There 
his  great  historical  plays  have  been  heard  and 
praised  and  abused;  there  he  shows  in  his 
later  writings  a  mystic  strain ;  there  last  autumn 
after  some  years  of  exaltation  he  agreed  to  sep- 
arate from  his  wife,  for  the  clash  of  two  such 
opposing  temperaments  "  hindered  their  free 
development"  —  so  says  his  faithful  biographer. 
The  separation  caused  much  commotion  in  artis- 
tic and  dramatic  circles.  It  was,  however,  a 
perfectly  amicable  one ;  Harriet  Bosse  declared 
that  she  needed  more  liberty,  for  she  hopes  to 
travel  throughout  Europe.  A  laudable  ambition. 
Strindberg,  notwithstanding  his  unhappy  unions, 
is  a  staunch  monogamist,  and  allowed  the  woman 
to  go  her  way.  He  has  already  drawn  her  por- 
trait in  the  powerful  historical  play  Christine. 
Therein  the  soul  of  the  actress  is  set  before  us 
as  the  counterfeit  Queen  of  Sweden;  winning 
and  masculine,  flattering  and  harsh,  a  heartless 
demon  and  a  tender  maiden  begging  for  sym- 
pathy ;  anon  a  mocking  tyrant,  a  wild  cat,  a 
second  Messalina.  It  would  appear  that  the 
poet  lost  no  time  in  studying  Fru  Strindberg' s 
characteristics.  She,  on  her  side,  had  made  a 
contract  with  her  manager  not  to  appear  in  any 
of  her  husband's  plays,  though  she  has  enjoyed 
triumphs  in  Fraulein  Julie  and  Samum.  Per- 
haps this  was  the  first  little  rift  in  the  domestic 
lute. 

144 


AUGUST   STRINDBERG 

Biologists  believe  that  after  forty  a  man  of 
genius  —  who  is  in  Darwinian  parlance  a  sport 
—  returns  to  his  tribe;  resumes  in  himself 
the  traits  of  his  parents.  Perhaps  Strindberg 
has  reached  the  grand  climacteric  and  may  give 
us  less  disturbing  masterpieces.  In  1902,  under 
the  title  of  Elf  Einakter,  a  German  translation 
of  eleven  of  his  one-act  plays  was  published. 
This  collection  contains  the  ripest  offering  thus 
far  of  his  unquestionable  genius.  It  begins 
with  Grafin  Julie,  condensed  by  the  dramatist  into 
a  one-act  piece.  "  A  tragedy  of  naturalism," 
he  calls  it.  It  is  an  emotional  bombshell.  The 
social  world  seems  topsy-turvied  after  a  first  read- 
ing. After  a  second,  while  the  gripping  power 
does  not  relax,  one  realizes  the  writer's  deep, 
almost  abysmal  knowledge  of  human  nature.  Im- 
agine a  Joseph  Andrews  made  love  to  by  a  Lady 
Booby,  youthful,  fascinating.  But  Fielding  aims 
light  shafts  of  satire  ;  Strindberg  calls  up  ghosts 
with  haunting  eyes.  Passion  there  is,  and  a 
horrible  atmosphere  of  reality.  You  know  the 
affair  has  happened;  you  see  the  valet,  Jean, 
chucking  his  cook-sweetheart  under  the  chin  as 
she  feeds  him  with  dainties  in  the  kitchen ;  you 
witness  the  appearance  on  the  scene  of  Julie 
enamoured ;  frantic,  unhappy  Julie ;  and  you 
view  the  crumbling  of  her  soul,  depicted  as  in 
one  of  those  drawings  of  Giulio  Romano  from 
which  you  avert  your  head.  The  finale  makes 
Ghosts  an  entertainment  for  urchins. 

Everything  is  brought  about  naturally,  inevi- 
145 


ICONOCLASTS 

tably.  Be  it  understood,  Strindberg  is  never 
pornographic,  nor  does  he  show  a  naked  soul 
merely  to  afford  charming  diversion,  which  is 
the  practice  of  some  French  dramatists. 

What  would  our  Ibsen-hating  critics  say  after 
Grafin  Julie  or  Glaubiger!  That  kitchen  — 
fancy  a  kitchen  as  a  battlefield  of  souls!  —  with 
its  good-hearted  and  pious  cook,  the  impudent 
scoundrel  of  a  valet  eager  for  revenge  on  his 
superiors,  and  the  hallucinated  girl  from  above 
stairs  —  it  is  a  tiny  epic  of  hatred,  of  class  against 
mass. 

Julie  is  neurotic.  She  has  coolly  snapped  the 
betrothal  vows  made  with  a  titled  young  man  of 
the  district.  It  is  St.  John's  Eve.  The  villa  of 
the  Count,  Julie's  father,  is  empty  save  for  the 
two  servants,  Jean  and  Christina  —  the  latter  is 
the  cook.  Julie,  bored  by  her  colourless  life  and 
fevered  by  a  midsummer's  madness,  throws  her- 
self at  the  valet's  head.  He  is  frightened.  His 
servant  nature  has  the  upper  hand  until  the  pair, 
forced  to  hide  because  of  the  intrusion  of  rough 
country  folk,  reappear.  Then  the  male  brute  is 
smirking,  triumphant.  Justin  Huntly  McCarthy 
made  a  translation  of  the  piece  for  an  English 
magazine  in  1892.  Here  is  an  excerpt :  — 

[JULIE  enters,  sees  the  disorder  in  the  kitchen,  and  clasps 

her  hands.     Then  she  takes  a  powder  puff  and  pou>- 

ders  her  face] 

JEAN.  [Enters  excited]  There,  you  see  and  you 
hear.  Do  you  still  think  it  possible  to  remain  here  ? 

JULIE.   No,  I  do  not.     But  what  shall  we  do  ? 
146 


AUGUST   STRINDBERG 

JEAN.    Fly ;  travel ;  fly  away  from  here. 

JULIE.    Travel  ?     Yes  !     But  where  ? 

JEAN.  To  Switzerland,  to  the  Italian  lakes.  Have 
you  ever  been  there  ? 

JULIE.    No.     Is  it  beautiful  ? 

JEAN.  An  eternal  summer.  Orange  trees,  laurels 
—  ah! 

JULIE.    But  what  shall  we  do  there  afterwards  ? 

JEAN.  We  will  start  a  first-class  hotel  for  first-class 
guests. 

JULIE.  A  hotel ! 

JEAN.  That  is  the  life  to  live,  believe  me.  Always 
new  faces,  new  languages,  not  a  moment's  leisure  for 
worrying  or  dreaming,  no  seeking  after  employment, 
for  work  comes  of  itself.  Night  and  day  the  bell 
rings,  the  trains  whistle,  the  omnibuses  come  and 
go  while  the  gold  pieces  roll  into  the  till.  That  is  a 
life  to  live. 

JULIE.    That  is  a  life  to  live.     And  what  of  me  ? 

JEAN.  You  shall  be  the  mistress  of  the  house,  the 
ornament  of  the  firm.  With  your  appearance  and 
your  manners  we  are  sure  of  a  colossal  success.  You 
sit  like  a  queen  in  the  office  and  set  your  slaves  in 
motion  with  one  touch  on  the  electric  bell ;  the 
guests  march  past  your  throne  and  lay  their  treas- 
ures humbly  on  the  table.  You  cannot  imagine  how 
people  tremble  when  they  get  a  bill.  I  will  salt  the 
accounts  and  you  will  sugar  them  with  your  most 
bewitching  smile.  Yes,  let  us  travel  far  from  here. 
[ffe  takes  a  time-table  from  his  pocket '.]  Good.  By 
the  next  train  we  are  in  Malmo  at  6.30,  in  Hamburg 
at  8.40  to-morrow  morning,  from  Frankfort  to  Basle 
in  one  day,  and  we  are  in  Como  by  the  St.  Gothard 
route  in,  let  me  see,  three  days.  Three  days  1 

H7 


ICONOCLASTS 

JULIE.  That  is  all  very  fine.  But,  Jean,  you  must 
give  me  courage.  Say  that  you  love  me.  Come  and 
take  me  in  your  arms. 

JEAN.  \Hesitating\  I  would  like  to,  but  I  dare 
not.  Not  here  in  this  house.  I  love  you  without 
doubt.  Can  you  doubt  it  ? 

JULIE.  You !  Say  "  thou  "  to  me.  Between  us 
there  are  no  longer  any  barriers.  Say  "  thou." 

JEAN.  [Troubled]  I  cannot.  There  are  still  bar- 
riers between  us  so  long  as  we  remain  in  this  house. 
It  recalls  the  past,  it  recalls  the  Count.  I  have 
never  met  any  man  who  compelled  such  respect  from 
me.  I  have  only  to  see  his  glove  lying  on  a  table 
to  feel  quite  small.  I  have  only  to  hear  his  bell  and 
I  start  like  a  shying  horse.  And  when  I  look  at  his 
boots  standing  there  so  stiff  and  stately,  it  makes  me 
shiver.  \_He  pushes  the  boots  away  with  his  foot.~\ 
Superstition,  prejudice,  which  has  been  driven  into 
us  from  childhood,  but  which  we  can  never  get  free 
of.  If  you  will  only  come  into  another  country,  into 
a  republic,  then  people  shall  kneel  down  before  my 
porter's  livery,  people  shall  kneel  down.  But  I  shall 
not  kneel  down.  I  am  not  born  to  kneel,  for  there 
is  stuff  in  me  ;  there  is  character  in  me ;  and  if  once 
I  reach  the  lowest  branch,  you  shall  watch  me  climb. 
To-day  I  am  a  lackey,  but  next  year  I  am  a  pro- 
prietor ;  in  a  few  years  I  shall  have  an  income,  and 
then  I  run  off  to  Roumania,  where  I  buy  a  decora- 
tion. I  can — mark  well  that  I  say  can  —  die  a 
count. 

JULIE.    Beautiful,  beautiful ! 

JEAN.  Ah,  in  Roumania  a  man  can  buy  a  count's 
title,  and  then  you  will  be  a  countess,  my  countess. 

JULIE.   What  do   I   care  for  what   I   have   cast 

148 


AUGUST   STRINDBERG 

aside  !  Say  that  you  love  me,  or  else  —  ah,  what  am 
I  else? 

JEAN.  I  will  say  it  a  thousand  times  —  later  on. 
But  not  here.  And  above  all,  no  hysterics,  or  all  is 
lost.  We  must  manage  the  affair  quietly,  like  sensi- 
ble people.  \He  takes  out  a  cigar,  cuts  the  end,  and 
lights  it.']  Sit  down  there,  and  I  will  sit  here,  and 
then  we  can  chat  as  if  nothing  had  happened. 

JULIE.    Oh,  my  God  !     Have  you  no  feelings  ? 

JEAN.  I !  why,  there  is  no  one  more  sensitive  than 
I,  but  I  can  command  my  feelings. 

JULIE.  A  short  time  ago  you  would  have  kissed 
my  shoe,  and  now  — 

JEAN.  \ColdJy~\  Yes,  before.  But  now  we  have 
something  else  to  think  about. 

The  scamp  sounds  her  as  to  the  money  she 
possesses.  She  has  none.  He  compels  her  to 
rob  her  father.  He  kills  her  bird.  She  curses 
him,  for  her  poor  brain  is  going  under  from 
the  strain  put  upon  it.  She  throws  herself  upon 
the  mercy  of  the  cook ;  but  Christina,  who  is 
a  good  woman,  repels  and  rebukes  the  sinner. 
The  Count  returns.  He  rings.  Jean  again 
becomes  the  servant,  though  not  until  he  has 
given  Julie  his  razor,  bidding  her  use  it.  She 
goes  out  and  kills  herself,  unable  to  resist  the 
stronger  will. 

In  this  shocking  drama  is  crystallized  all  the 
bitterness  of  Strindberg,  for  he  once  married 
a  Countess ;  he,  too,  has  lived  in  the  Inferno. 
Again  we  say  the  ending  revolts;  in  com- 
parison, the  coda  of  Ibsen's  Ghosts  is  a  mild 
149 


ICONOCLASTS 

exercise  in  emotional  arpeggios.  Strindberg's 
heavy  fist  smashes  out  music,  sinister  and  mur- 
derous, in  this  ruthless  play. 

Julie  is  a  close  study  of  a  girl  whose  blood  is 
tainted  before  birth,  whose  education  has  been 
false,  whose  life  in  society  has  inflamed  her  pas- 
sions. She  falls  easily  when  the  cunning  Jean 
tempts  her  at  the  psychologic  moment.  I  saw 
Julie  at  the  Kleines  Theatre,  Berlin,  last  autumn, 
Frau  Eysoldt  —  Sorma  suffering  from  a  bruised 
arm  —  assuming  the  title  role,  deciphering 
with  skill  the  abnormal  hieroglyphics  of  the 
character. 

In  Glaubiger,  a  tragic  comedy,  Strindberg 
treats,  with  his  accustomed  omniscience,  a  sweet 
little  story  about  a  man  who  follows  his  runaway 
wife  to  a  seaside  resort  and  becomes  acquainted 
with  the  new  husband  —  unknown  to  the  lady, 
who  is  away  for  a  week.  Here  we  catch  a 
glimpse  of  another  hell,  the  cruelty  of  a  power- 
ful intellect.  The  weaker  man  is  a  painter, 
turned  sculptor,  and  —  subtle  irony  —  he  models 
only  his  wife's  figure.  (This  was  published  in 
1889;  Ibsen  certainly  read  it  —  witness  When 
We  Dead  Awake.)  The  snaring  of  the  poor 
emotional  wretch's  soul  is  masterly.  It  is  all 
over  in  an  hour,  the  entire  play,  and  again  we 
feel  as  if  we  had  mutely  assisted  at  the  obsequies 
of  three  human  beings. 

The  first  husband  —  who  is  discovered  as  such 
at  the  end  of  the  play  —  meets  his  former  wife, 
and  her  infamous  nature  is  exposed.  The  artist 
150 


AUGUST   STRINDBERG 

hears  the  conversation,  and  his  fate  is  not  to  be 
spoken  of  lightly.  We  pass  on. 

Paria  is  after  a  tale  of  Ola  Hansson.  It  need 
not  detain  us.  Foe  is  a  child  compared  to 
Strindberg  in  the  analysis  of  morbid  states  of 
soul.  Samum  is  a  shuddering  ode  to  revenge. 
Finally  we  arrive  at  Die  Starkere,  which  met 
with  such  acclaim  on  the  Continent.  Its  chief 
device  of  having  one  silent  figure  and  making 
the  other  do  the  talking  is  sufficiently  novel. 
But  it  is  again  the  drama,  always  the  drama  with 
Strindberg.  His  picture,  executed  by  a  kindred 
and  sympathetic  interpreter,  Edvard  Munch, 
shows  the  face  of  one  who,  like  Dante,  has  seen 
the  nethermost  hell. 

Played  by  two  artistic  actresses,  this  sardonic 
little  sketch,  replete  with  irony,  malice,  hatred,  — 
yet  full  of  humanity, — would  prove  most  attrac- 
tive. It  has  many  sly  strokes  of  humour.  The 
scene  of  the  action  is  a  cafe  on  Christmas  Eve. 
Madame  X  talks  to  Mademoiselle  Y,  who  re- 
mains absolutely  silent,  yet  by  glances  and  ges- 
tures contrives  to  send  the  other  woman  scudding 
along  the  road  from  idle,  amenable  chatter  to  out- 
rageous recrimination.  The  two  women  love 
the  same  man.  Madame  X  is  his  wife.  Fe- 
rociously she  exposes  her  secrets.  Her  husband 
at  first  has  forced  her  to  imitate  Mademoiselle  Y. 
But  she  is  now  the  stronger.  She  has  made  him 
forget  his  early  love,  who  sits  in  a  dreary  cafe 
alone  on  Christmas  Eve,  while  she,  his  legal  wife, 
will  go  home  to  the  father  and  children !  It  is 


ICONOCLASTS 

an  ugly  episode.  In  Das  Band  we  reach  a  play 
revealing  the  better  characteristics  of  the  poet. 
It  consists  only  of  a  court-room  scene  with  jury- 
men, judge,  and  officers  before  whom  a  husband 
and  wife  make  their  petition  for  divorce — ac- 
cording to  Scandinavian  procedure.  They  are 
resolved  to  separate ;  but  there  is  a  child,  a  son, 
beloved  by  both.  With  this  elemental  stuff  as  a 
subject,  Strindberg  wrings  the  heart  of  you.  At 
the  end  the  parents  damn  themselves  by  their 
own  admission,  the  child  is  taken  from  their 
custody,  and  they  confront  each  other  in  the 
deserted,  dim  court  room,  their  hearts  bursting, 
their  future  a  foggy,  abandoned  field.  They  re- 
call the  poet  Aldrich's  picture  of  No-man's  land, 
where  the  soul  sees  its  double,  a  doppelganger. 

"  And  who  are  you  ?  "  cried  one  agape, 
Shuddering  in  the  gloaming  light ; 

"  I  know  not,"  said  the  second  shape, 
"  I  only  died  last  night." 

These  two  souls  in  the  play,  once  hooked  by 
the  steels  of  marriage  and  parenthood,  realize  as 
they  fall  loathingly  asunder  that  they  are  dead, 
that  their  life  has  passed  on  into  the  soul  of  their 
miserable  boy.  It  is  such  a  play  as  this  that 
vindicates  Strindberg's  claim  to  the  mastery  of 
the  drama.  Here  he  is  at  his  human  best,  freed 
from  the  bizarre,  and  his  humour  and  wit  illumi- 
nate the  ghastly  darkness  with  friendly  flashes. 
The  jurymen  are  excellent,  and  more  comical 
still  are  the  court  officers.  Many  touches 
throughout  would  make  the  translation  and  per- 
152 


AUGUST   STRINDBERG 

formance  of  Das  Band  profitable.  And  not  once 
is  the  child  on  the  stage.  Possibly,  as  America 
is  a  divorce-loving  nation,  it  would  reject  with 
indignation  the  sight  of  so  many  bleaching  family 
bones! 

Mit  dem  Feuer  Spielen  is  a  comedy  of  a  drastic 
kind.  It  shows  Nietzsche's  influence.  The  sis- 
ter of  Nietzsche,  Frau  Forster-Nietzsche,  once 
assured  me  in  Weimar  that  her  brother  enjoyed 
reading  Strindberg's  novels.  And  there  are 
several  references  to  Strindberg  in  the  pub- 
lished correspondence  of  Georg  Brandes  and 
Nietzsche. 

Debit  and  Credit  also  proves  that,  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  Strindberg  is  a  Nietzschean. 
It  is  a  rogue's  comedy  with  original  variations. 
The  chief  character  evokes  laughter,  for  through 
the  grim  and  sordid  rifts  in  the  plot  —  it  pictures 
a  tawdry  great  man  —  we  hear  bursts  of  natural 
fun.  There  is  humour,  kindly  and  mocking.  Very 
Shaw-like,  except  that  it  was  written  in  1892,  is 
Mutterl iebe.  In  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession,  Mr. 
Shaw  expanded  the  same  grewsome  idea.  Else- 
where the  Irish  writer  calls  Strindberg  "  the  only 
living  genuine  Shakespearian  dramatist."  Strind- 
berg in  his  fifteen  pages  traverses  a  lifetime, 
and  his  ending  is  logical. 

In  the  preface  to  Fraulein  Julie,  Strindberg 
makes  a  general  confession — for  him  as  for 
Tolstoy  a  psychologic  necessity.  "  Some  peo- 
ple," he  says,  "  have  accused  my  tragedy  of  being 
too  sad,.,  as  though  one  desired  a  merry  tragedy. 
'.S3 


ICONOCLASTS 

People  call  authoritatively  for  the  Joy  of  Life, 
and  theatrical  managers  call  for  farces,  as  though 
the  Joy  of  Life  consisted  in  being  foolish,  and 
in  describing  people  who  each  and  every  one 
are  suffering  from  St.  Vitus's  dance  or  idiocy. 
I  find  the  joy  of  life  in  the  powerful,  terrible 
struggle  of  life;  and  the  capability  of  experi- 
encing something,  of  learning  something,  is  a 
pleasure  to  me.  And  therefore  I  have  chosen 
an  unusual  but  instructive  subject;  in  other 
words,  an  exception,  but  a  great  exception,  that 
will  strengthen  the  rules  which  offend  the  apos- 
tles of  the  commonplace.  What  will  further 
create  antipathy  in  some  is  the  fact  that  my 
plan  of  action  is  not  simple,  and  that  there  is 
not  one  view  alone  to  be  taken  of  it.  An  event 
in  life  —  and  this  is  rather  a  new  discovery  —  is 
usually  accompanied  by  a  series  of  more  or  less 
deep-seated  motives;  but  the  spectator  usually 
generally  chooses  that  one  which  his  power 
of  judgment  finds  simplest  to  grasp,  or  that  his 
gift  of  judgment  considers  the  most  honourable. 
For  example,  some  one  commits  suicide :  '  Bad 
business ! '  says  the  citizen  ;  '  Unhappy  love  !  ' 
says  the  woman  ;  '  Sickness  ! '  the  sick  man ; 
'  Disappointed  hopes  ! '  the  bankrupt.  But  it 
may  be  that  none  of  these  reasons  is  the  real 
one,  and  that  the  dead  man  hid  the  real  one  by 
pretending  another  that  would  throw  the  most 
favourable  light  on  his  memory." 

The  Father  (produced  in  1887  and  translated 
into  English  by  N.  Erichsen)  is  in  ..three  .shp£t 


AUGUST   STRINDBERG 

acts.  It  depicts  the  destruction  of  a  man's 
brain  through  the  machinations  of  his  malevo- 
lent wife.  Strindberg's  misogyny  is  the  key- 
note of  his  early  work.  He  hates  woman.  He 
accuses  Ibsen  of  gynolatry.  . "  My  superior 
intelligence  revolts,"  he  cries,  "  against  the 
gynolatry  which  is  the  latest  superstition  of 
the  free-thinkers."  His  own  married  life  was 
so  unhappy  that  he  revenges  himself  by  attack- 
ing the  entire  sex.  Every  book,  every  play,  is 
a  confession.  He  is  the  most  subjective  drama- 
tist and  poet  of  his  age.  In  Comrades  he 
synthesizes  the  situation  :  — 

To  wish  to  dethrone  Man  and  replace  him  by 
Woman  —  going  back  to  a  matriarchy  —  to  dethrone 
the  true  master  of  creation,  he  who  has  created 
civilization  and  given  to  the  vulgar  the  benefit  of  his 
culture  ;  he  who  is  the  generator  of  great  thoughts, 
of  the  arts  and  crafts,  of  everything,  indeed  ;  to  de- 
throne him,  I  say,  in  order  to  elevate  "les  sales 
betes  "  of  women,  who  have  never  taken  part  in  the 
work  of  civilization  (with  a  few  futile  exceptions),  is 
to  my  mind  a  provocation  to  my  sex.  And  at  the 
jidea  of  seeing  "  arrive  "  these  anthropomorphs,  these 
half  apes,  this  horde  of  half-developed  animals,  these 
women  whose  intellects  are  of  the  age  of  bronze,  the 
male  in  me  revolts.  I  feel  myself  stirred  by  an 
angry  need  of  resisting  this  enemy,  inferior  in  intel- 
lect, but  superior  by  her  complete  absence  of  moral 
sense. 

In  this  war  to  the  death  between  the  two  sexes 
it  would  appear  that  the  less  honest  and  more  per- 
verse would  come  out  conqueror,  since  the  chance 
155 


ICONOCLASTS 

of  man's  gaining  the  battle  is  very  dubious,  handi- 
capped as  he  is  by  an  inbred  respect  for  woman, 
without  counting  the  advantages  that  he  gives  her 
in  supporting  her  and  leaving  her  time  free  to  equip 
herself  for  the  fight. 

This  sex-against-sex  manifesto  will  not  make 
him  popular  in  America,  a  land  peopled  with 
gynolatrists ;  but  his  plays  and  novels  may  be 
read  with  profit;  if  nothing  else,  they  illustrate 
the  violent  rebound  of  the  pendulum  in  Scandi- 
navia, where  the  woman  question  absorbed  all 
others  for  a  time.  Besides,  Strindberg  is  a  good 
hater,  and  good  haters  are  rare  and  stimulating 
spectacles. 

Inferno  is  the  very  quintessence  of  Strind- 
berg. Written  between  two  attacks  —  his  un- 
stable nerves  send  him  at  intervals  into  retreat 
—  it  is  the  most  awful  portrayal  of  mental 
suffering  ever  committed  to  paper.  Poe  said  in 
one  of  his  Marginalia  that  the  man  who  dared 
to  write  the  story  of  his  heart  would  fire  the 
paper  upon  which  he  wrote.  This  Strindberg 
has  dared  to  do  with  a  freedom,  a  diabolical 
minuteness,  that  make  the  naive  stutterings  of 
Verlaine  and  the  sophisticated  confessions  of 
Huysmans  mere  literature.  Because  of  their 
intensity  you  are  forced  to  believe  Strindberg, 
though  his  is  only  too  plainly  a  pathologic  case ; 
the  delusions  of  persecution,  of  grandeur,  of 
almost  the  entire  lyre  of  psychiatric  woes,  are 
to  be  detected  in  this  unique  book.  An  enemy, 
a  Russian,  haunts  him  in  Paris  and  plays  on  the 
156 


AUGUST   STRINDBERG 

piano  poisonous  music  which  warns  the  listener 
that  he  is  doomed.  It  is  the  history  of  Strind- 
berg's  quarrel  with  the  Polish  poet  mystic  and 
dramatist,  Stanislaw  Przybyszewski,  who  really 
tracked  the  Swede  because  he  was  jealous  of 
his  own  wife.  Strindberg  once  wrote  of  Maupas- 
sant's La  Horla,  "  I  recognize  myself  in  that, 
and  do  not  deny  that  insanity  has  developed." 
Margit  is  a  five-act  drama,  with  the  sub-title 
La  Femme  du  Chevalier  Bengt.  It  is  a  his- 
torical play  of  the  times  of  the  Reformation, 
and  it  is  modern  in  its  glacial  analysis  of  the 
feminine  soul.  The  picture  is  more  various  than 
is  the  case  with  the  eternal  monologue  or  dia- 
logues of  his  shorter  pieces —  and  there  is  humour 
of  a  deadly  kind.  In  Das  Geheimnis  der  Gilde 
(1879-80)  the  theme  of  Ibsen's  The  Master 
Builder  was  anticipated.  To  enumerate  the 
works  of  Strindberg  would  consume  columns ; 
Herr  Schering  of  Berlin  has  literally  devoted 
his  life  to  the  task  of  translating  them.  Al- 
ready there  are  forty  volumes  of  plays,  tales, 
novels,  essays,  monographs,  poems,  fables.  Even 
in  these  times  of  piping  versatility,  the  many- 
sided  activities  of  the  Swede  amaze.  His  Nach 
Damaskus  reveals  a  tendency  to  drift  Rome- 
ward,  to  that  Roman  church,  the  sanctuary  for 
souls  weary  of  the  conflict.  There  is  no  deny- 
ing the  fact  that  Strindberg's  later  productions 
show  a  cooler  head,  steadier  nerves,  though  the 
motives  are  usually  madness  or  blood  guilt.  The 
latest  volume  at  the  time  of  writing  is  devoted 
157 


ICONOCLASTS 

to  three  plays,  —  Die  Kronbraut,  Schwanenweiss, 
Ein  Traumspiel.  Two  of  these  are  powerful 
and  painful.  The  playwright  paints  the  peas- 
antry of  his  country  with  the  sombre  brush  of 
Hauptmann.  Ein  Traumspiel  is  that  wonderful 
thing,  a  real  dream  put  before  us  with  all  the 
wild  irrelevancies  of  a  dream,  yet  with  sober  and 
convincing  art.  As  a  stage  piece  it  would  be 
superbly  fantastic.  Strindberg  has  a  faculty, 
which  he  shares  in  common  with  E.  T.  W.  Hoff- 
mann and  Edgar  Poe,  of  catching  the  ghosts  of 
his  brain  at  their  wildest  and  pinning  them  down 
on  paper.  In  such  moods  he  may  be  truly  called 
a  seer.  Swedenborg  alone  equals  him  in  the 
veracity  and  intensity  of  his  visions. 

These  later  plays  were  admittedly  composed 
during  the  few  happy  years  with  his  third  wife,  Fru 
Strindberg-Bosse.  Edwin  Bjorkman,  who  has 
written  with  authority  of  his  fellow-countryman, 
declares  that  "  the  motives  that  move  Strindberg 
are  moral." 

"One  of  his  favourite  doctrines,"  continues 
Mr.  Bjorkman,  "is  that  social  and  individual 
purity  is  the  only  solid  foundation  for  physical 
and  mental  health,  as  well  as  an  indispensable 
condition  of  true  achievement.  He  speaks  some- 
where of  an  artist  '  who  was  yearning  for  the 
summit  of  ambition  without  being  willing  to  pay 
the  price  required  of  those  who  are  to  reach  it.'" 
And  then  he  adds,  "  The  only  choice  left  us  by 
life  is  between  the  laurel  and  our  pleasure." 

Further  he  quotes  the  dramatist,  "  I  let  my- 
158 


AUGUST   STRINDBERG 

self  be  carried  away  by  the  heat  of  the  battle 
[over  the  woman's  emancipation  movement,  of 
which  he  was  at  that  time  the  only  prominent 
literary  antagonist  in  the  Scandinavian  coun- 
tries], and  I  went  so  far  beyond  the  limits  of 
propriety  that  my  countrymen  feared  I  had  be- 
come insane." 

An  alchemist,  a  dabbler  in  spiritualism,  a 
wanderer  among  the  lowly  long  before  Gorky 
was  heard  of,  Strindberg  once  wrote  to  a  friend 
when  lack  of  money  kept  him  a  practical  pris- 
oner on  a  small  island  outside  of  Stockholm, 
although  his  writing-desk  was  housing  the  com- 
pleted manuscripts  of  six  one-act  plays  and  two 
larger  dramas,  "  I  am  thinking  of  becoming  a 
photographer  in  order  to  save  my  talent  as  a 
writer." 

A  later  novel  is  autobiographic.  Einsam 
was  published  in  1903.  It  is  more  reflective 
than  his  other  books  and  betrays  the  loneliness 
of  the  returned  exile.  It  registers  the  poet's 
dissatisfaction  with  Lund,  to  which  he  went  after 
the  tremendous  experiences  from  1894  to  1898. 
A  most  startling  play,  one  of  my  favourites,  is 
Totentauz.  It  is  a  double  drama,  the  shabby 
hero  of  which  would  have  pleased  the  creator 
of  Captain  Costigan.  His  novel  Die  Gotischen 
Zimmer  (1904)  is  of  socialistic  character  and 
contains  many  eloquent  pages.  As  he  was  born 
January  22,  1849,  in  Stockholm,  it  will  be  seen 
that  this  erratic  man  is  beginning  to  reach  the 
cooling  period  of  his  genius. 
159 


ICONOCLASTS 

The  most  vivid  of  his  books,  after  Inferno,  is 
The  Confessions  of  a  Fool  (Die  Beichte  eines 
Thoren).  Strindberg's  wife,  to  marry  him,  had 
divorced  herself  from  a  baron.  Yet  the  sus- 
picious writer  accused  her  of  all  the  crimes  in 
the  calendar.  And  he  also  admits  that  he 
abused  her.  Strindberg  was  suffering  from 
paranoia  simplex  chronica,  according  to  Dr. 
William  Hirsch,  whose  valuable  work,  Genius 
and  Degeneration,  contains  a  study  of  the 
Swede's  case.  What  is  of  peculiar  interest  is 
the  symptom  in  his  malady  called  "  referential 
ideas."  "The  patients,"  says  Dr.  Hirsch,  "re- 
fer all  that  goes  on  about  to  themselves.  They 
suspect  that  the  world  is  leagued  against  them." 
For  example :  when  Strindberg  first  read  Ib- 
sen's Wild  Duck,  he  immediately  thought  the 
whole  piece  was  intended  for  him  and  was  only 
written  on  his  account  He  expressed  himself 
as  follows :  — 

It  was  a  drama  of  the  famous  Norwegian  spy, 
the  inventor  of  the  equality  madness.  How  the 
book  fell  into  my  hands  I  could  not  say.  But  now 
everything  was  clear  and  gave  occasion  to  the  worst 
suspicions  concerning  the  reputation  of  my  wife. 
The  plot  of  the  drama  was  as  follows :  A  photogra- 
pher (a  nickname  I  had  earned  by  my  novels  drawn 
from  real  life)  has  married  a  person  of  doubtful 
repute,  who  had  been  formerly  the  mistress  of  a 
great  proprietor.  The  woman  supports  the  hus- 
band from  a  secret  fund  which  she  derives  from  her 
former  partner.  In  addition,  she  carries  on  the 
160 


AUGUST   STRINDBERG 

business  of  her  husband,  a  good-for-nothing,  who 
spends  his  time  drinking  in  the  society  of  persons 
of  no  consequence.  Now  that  is  a  misrepresenta- 
tion of  the  facts  committed  by  the  reporters.  They 
were  informed  that  Maria  [Strindberg's  wife]  made 
translations,  but  they  did  not  know  that  it  was  I  who 
particularly  corrected  them  and  paid  over  to  her  the 
sums  received  for  them.  Matters  become  bad  when 
the  poor  photographer  discovers  that  the  adored 
daughter  is  not  his  child,  and  that  the  wife  warned 
him  when  she  induced  him  to  marry  her.  To  com- 
plete his  disgrace,  the  husband  consents  to  accept 
a  large  sum  as  indemnity.  By  this  I  understand 
Maria's  loan  upon  the  baron's  security,  which  I 
endorsed  after  my  wedding.  ...  I  prepared  a 
great  scene  for  the  afternoon.  I  wished  to  catch 
Maria  in  cross-examination,  to  which  I  wished  to 
give  the  form  of  a  defence  for  us  both.  We  had 
been  equally  attracted  by  the  scarecrow  of  the 
masculinists,  who  had  been  paid  for  the  pretty  job. 

To  show  how  mad  were  his  conclusions  it  is 
only  necessary  to  add  that  he  does  not  resemble 
in  the  least  the  selfish  idealist,  Hjalmar  Ekdal,  in 
The  Wild  Duck,  who  never  works  unless  he  has 
to,  while  Strindberg's  literary  labours  have  been 
enormous.  Nor  is  it  conceivable  that  the  baron- 
ess, Madame  Strindberg,  furnished  Ibsen  with 
the  documents  for  the  portrait  of  the  delightful 
Gina  Ekdal.  That  woman  was  drawn  from  the 
people.  Furthermore,  to  call  Ibsen  "  the  in- 
ventor of  the  equality  madness "  is  absolutely 
a  misstatement  of  a  fact,  as  Ibsen  has  been  a 
despiser  of  democracy  and  all  forms  of  equality. 
161 


ICONOCLASTS 

Vvith  an  almost  infinite  capacity  for  suffering, 
let  us  hope  that  this  great,  bruised  soul  has 
found  surcease  from  its  mental  suffering,  found 
some  gleams  of  consolation,  in  his  calmer  years 
—  until  his  next  psychical  hegira.  In  rebel- 
ling against  his  existence,  in  refusing  to  accept 
the  wisdom  of  the  experienced,  Strindberg  has 
suffered  intensely  because  his  is  an  intense 
temperament.  But  he  is  a  "  culture  hero,"  he 
has  "  proved  all  things,"  and  even  from  his 
hell  he  has  brought  us  the  history  of  experi- 
ences not  to  be  forgotten.  One  is  tempted  to 
credit  the  alleged  utterance  of  Ibsen,  "  Here  is 
one  who  will  be  greater  than  I !" 


162 


Ill 

HENRY   BECQUE 

EMILE  ZOLA  once  wrote  in  his  sweeping  dic- 
tatorial manner,  "  Le  theatre  sera  naturaliste 
ou  il  ne  sera  pas  "  ;  but  as  Henry  Becque  said 
in  his  mordant  style,  Zola  always  convinced 
one  in  his  pronunciamentos ;  it  was  only  when 
he  attempted  to  put  his  theories  into  action  that 
they  completely  broke  down.  Alas  !  realism  in 
the  theatre  after  all  the  gong-sounding  of  caf£ 
aestheticians,  after  the  desperate  campaigns  of 
the  one  clairvoyant  manager  in  the  movement, 
Antoine,  is  as  dead  as  the  romanticism  of  Her- 
nani.  After  the  flamboyant,  the  drab  —  and 
now  they  are  both  relegated  to  the  limbo  of  the 
tried-and-found-wanting. 

When  Zola  sat  down  to  pen  his  famous  call 
to  arms,  Naturalism  on  the  Stage,  Antoine  was 
still  in  the  future,  Dumas  fils  and  Sardou  ruled 
the  Parisian  theatre,  Uncle  Sarcey  manufac- 
tured his  diverting  feuilletons,  and  Augier  was 
become  a  classic.  The  author  of  L'Assommoir 
had  like  Alexander  sighed  for  new  worlds  to 
subjugate.  He  had  won  a  victory,  thanks  to 
Flaubert  and  the  De  Goncourts,  in  fiction ;  it 
remained  for  the  theatre  to  provoke  his  ire. 
163 


ICONOCLASTS 

It  still  clung  obstinately  to  old-fashioned  con- 
ventions and  refused  to  be  coerced  either  by 
Henrietta  Mar^chal  or  by  the  furious  onslaught 
of  Zola  and  his  cohort  of  writing  men. 

In  the  essay  referred  to,  Zola  said  that  a 
piece  of  work  will  always  be  a  corner  of  nature 
seen  through  a  temperament.  He  told  the 
truth  when  he  declared  that  the  "romantic 
movement  was  but  a  skirmish ;  romanticism, 
which  corresponds  to  nothing  durable,  was 
simply  a  restless  regret  of  the  old  world." 
Stendhal  and  Balzac  had  created  the  modern 
novel.  The  stage  did  not  move  with  the  other 
arts,  though  Diderot  and  Mercier  "laid  down 
squarely  the  basis  of  the  naturalistic  theatre." 
Victor  Hugo  gave  the  romantic  drama  its  death- 
blow. Scribe  was  an  ingenious  cabinet-maker. 
Sardou  "  has  no  life  —  only  movement."  Dumas 
the  younger  was  spoiled  by  cleverness  —  "a  man 
of  genius  is  not  clever,  and  a  man  of  genius  is 
necessary  to  establish  the  naturalistic  formula 
in  a  masterly  fashion."  Besides,  Dumas 
preaches,  always  preaches.  "  Emile  Augier 
is  the  real  master  of  the  French  stage,  the  most 
sincere " ;  but  he  did  not  know  how  to  disen- 
gage himself  from  conventions,  from  stereotyped 
ideas,  from  made-up  ideas. 

Who,  then,  was  to  be  the  saviour,  according 
to  Zola?  And  this  writer  did  not  underrate 
the  difficulties  of  the  task.  He  knew  that 
"the  dramatic  author  was  enclosed  in  a  rigid 
frame,  .  .  .  that  the  solitary  reader  tolerates 
164 


HENRY   BECQUE 

everything,  goes  where  he  is  led,  even  when  he 
is  disgusted ;  while  the  spectators  taken  en 
masse  are  seized  with  prudishness,  with  frights, 
with  sensibilities  of  which  the  author  must  take 
notice  under  pain  of  a  certain  fall.  But  every- 
thing marches  forward !  If  the  theatre  will 
submit  to  Sardou's  juggling,  to  the  theories  and 
witticisms  of  Dumas,  to  the  sentimental  char- 
acters of  Augier,  the  theatre  will  be  left  in  the  on- 
ward movement  of  civilization  " ;  and  as  Becque 
said  in  his  Souvenirs  of  a  Dramatic  Author, 
the  theatre  has  reached  its  end  many  times,  yet 
somehow  it  continues  to  flourish  despite  the 
gloomy  prophecies  of  the  professors  and  critical 
malcontents.  Every  season,  avowed  Becque, 
that  same  cry  rises  to  heaven,  — "  La  fin  du 
theatre  " ;  and  the  next  season  the  curtain  rises 
in  the  same  old  houses,  on  the  same  old  plays. 

However,  Zola  trumpeted  forth  his  opinions. 
According  to  him  the  De  Goncourt  brothers 
were  the  first  to  put  into  motion  realistic  ideas. 
Henriette  Marechal,  with  its  dialogue  copied 
from  the  spoken  conversation  of  contemporary 
life,  with  its  various  scenes  copied  boldly  from 
reality,  was  a  path  breaker.  And  Becque  again 
interrupts ;  Edmond  de  Goncourt  posed  for 
thirty  years  as  a  hissed  author,  "  pour  cette 
panade  d' Henriette  Marechal."  Away  with 
the  mechanism  of  the  polished,  dovetailed, 
machine-made  play  of  Dumas.  "  I  yearn  for 
life  with  its  shiver,  its  breath,  and  its  strength ; 
I  long  for  life  as  it  is,"  passionately  declaimed 
165 


ICONOCLASTS 

the  simple-minded  bourgeois  Zola,  who  then, 
in  default  of  other  naturalistic  dramatists, 
turned  his  Therese  Raquin  into  a  play  — 
and  melodrama  it  was,  not  without  its  moments 
of  power,  but  romantic  and  old-fashioned  to  a 
degree. 

And  this  was  Zola's  fate :  he  contumaciously 
usurped  the  throne  of  realism,  never  realizing 
his  life  long  that  he  was  a  romanticist  of  the 
deepest  dye,  a  follower  of  Hugo,  that  melo- 
dramatic taleteller.  All  the  while  he  fancied 
himself  a  lineal  descendant  of  Balzac  and  Flau- 
bert. Searching  ceaselessly  with  his  Diogenese 
lantern  for  a  dramatist,  he  nevertheless  over- 
looked not  only  a  great  one,  but  the  true  father 
of  the  latter-day  movement  in  French  dramatic 
literature  —  Henry  Becque.  What  a  paradox! 
Here  was  the  unfortunate  Becque  walking  the 
boulevards  night  and  day  with  plays  under  his 
arm,  plays  up  his  sleeve,  plays  in  his  hat,  plays 
at  home  —  and  always  was  he  shown  the  door, 
only  to  reappear  at  the  managerial  window. 
Calm  in  his  superiority,  his  temper  untouched 
by  his  trials,  Becque  presented  the  picture  of 
the  true  Parisian  man  of  genius,  —  witty,  ironical 
on  the  subject  of  his  misfortunes,  and  absolutely 
undaunted  by  refusals.  He  persisted  until  he 
forced  his  way  into  the  Comedie  Fran9aise, 
despite  the  intriguing,  the  disappointments,  the 
broken  promises,  and  the  open  hostility  of 
Sarcey,  then  the  reigning  pontiff  of  French 
^dramatic  criticism.  Jules  Clar^tie  pretended  a 
166 


HENRY   BECQUE 

sympathy  that  he  did  not  feel,  and  it  was  onl) 
when  pressure  was  brought  by  Edouard  Thierry 
that  his  masterpiece,  Les  Corbeaux,  was  put 
on  the  stage  after  many  disheartening  delays ; 
after  it  had  been  refused  at  the  Vaudeville,  the 
Gymnase,  the  Od^on,  the  Porte-Saint-Martin, 
the  Gaite,  the  Cluny,  and  the  Ambigu.  Such 
perseverance  is  positively  heroic. 

I  know  of  few  more  diverting  books  than 
Becque's  Memoirs  and  the  record  of  his  Literary 
Quarrels.  If  he  was  gay,  careless,  and  un- 
spoiled by  his  failures  in  his  daily  existence,  he 
must  have  saved  his  bile  for  his  books.  They 
are  vitriolic.  The  lashing  he  gives  Sarcey  and 
Claretie  is  deadly.  He  had  evidently  put  his 
revengeful  feelings  carefully  away  and  only  re- 
vived them  when  the  time  came,  when  his  suc- 
cesses, his  disciples,  his  election  as  the  master 
of  a  powerful  school,  warranted  his  decanting 
the  bitter  vintage.  How  it  sparkles,  how  it 
bites !  He  pours  upon  the  head  of  Sarcey  his 
choicest  irony.  After  snubbing  the  young 
Becque,  after  pompously  telling  him  that  he 
had  no  talent,  that  he  should  take  Scribe  for  a 
model,  Sarcey  at  the  end,  when  he  saw  Becque 
as  a  possible  strong  figure  in  the  dramatic  world, 
calmly  wrote :  "  Oh !  Becque  I  have  known  a 
long  time..  He  brought  me  his  first  piece.  He 
owes  it  to  me  that  his  The  Prodigal  Son  was 
played."  To  cap  his  attack,  Becque  prints  this 
statement  at  the  end  of  the  miserable  history  of 
his  efforts  to  secure  a  footing.  It  is  alm,o$t  top 


ICONOCLASTS 

good  to  be  true.  Diabolically  clever  also  is  his 
imitation  of  a  Sarcey  critique  on  Moliere,  for 
Sarcey  was  no  friend  of  character  dramas. 

In  his  preface  to  The  Ravens,  Becque  an- 
nounces that  he  is  not  a  thinker,  not  a  dreamer, 
not  a  psychologist,  not  a  believer  in  heredity. 
As  Jean  Jullien  truly  said,  the  Becque  plays 
prove  nothing,  are  not  photographic,  are  not 
deformations  of  life,  but  sincere  life  itself.  The 
author  relates  that  in  composing  —  he  had  a 
large  apartment  on  the  rue  de  Matignon  —  he 
spent  much  time  in  front  of  a  mirror  searching 
for  the  exact  gesture,  for  the  exact  glance  of  the 
eye,  for  the  precise  intonation.  This  fidelity  to 
nature  recalls  a  similar  procedure  of  Flaubert, 
who  chanted  at  the  top  of  his  formidable  voice 
his  phrases  to  hear  if  they  would  stand  the  test 
of  breathing.  Becque  caught  the  just  colour  of 
every  speech,  and  it  is  this  preoccupation  with 
essentials  of  his  art  that  enabled  him  to  set  on 
their  feet  most  solidly  all  his  characters.  They 
live,  they  have  the  breath  of  life  in  them  ;  when 
they  walk  or  talk,  we  believe  in  them.  The  peep 
he  permits  us  to  take  into  his  workshop  is  of 
much  value  to  the  student. 

He  admired  Antoine,  naturally,  and  his  opin- 
ion of  Zola  I  have  recorded.  He  rapped  Bru- 
netiere  sharply  over  the  knuckles  for  assuming 
that  criticism  conserves  the  tradition  of  litera- 
ture. Vain  words,  cries  Becque ;  literature 
makes  itself  despite  criticism,  it  is  ever  in  ad- 
vance of  the  critics.  Only  a  sterile  art  is  the. 
1 68 


HENRY   BECQUE 

result  of  academies.  Curiously  enough,  Becque 
had  a  consuming  admiration  for  Sardou.  Him 
he  proclaimed  the  real  master,  the  man  of  imagi- 
nation, observation,  the  masterly  manipulator  of 
the  character  of  characters.  This  is  rather  dis- 
concerting to  those  who  admire  in  the  Becque 
plays  just  those  qualities  in  which  Sardou  is  de- 
ficient. Perhaps  the  fact  that  Sardou  absolutely 
forced  the  production  of  Becque's  L' Enfant  Pro- 
digue  may  have  accentuated  his  praise  of  that 
prestidigitator  of  Marly.  Becque  entertained  a 
qualified  opinion  of  Ibsen  and  an  overwhelming 
feeling  for  Tolstoy  as  dramatist.  The  Rus- 
sian's Powers  of  Darkness  greatly  affected  the 
Frenchman.  (Becque  was  born  in  1837,  died 
in  1900.) 

And  what  is  this  naturalistic  formula  of 
Becque's  that  escaped  the  notice  of  the  zealous 
Zola  and  set  the  pace  for  nearly  all  the  younger 
men  ?  Is  it  not  the  absence  of  a  formula  of  the 
tricks  of  construction  religiously  handed  down 
by  the  Scribe-Sardou  school  ?  As  is  generally 
the  case,  the  disciples  have  gone  their  master 
one  better  in  their  disdain  of  solid  workmanship. 
The  taint  of  the  artificial,  of  the  sawdust,  is 
missing  in  Becque's  masterpieces ;  yet  with  all 
their  large  rhythms,  unconventional  act-ends, 
and  freedom  from  the  clicht,  there  is  no  ragged- 
ness  in  detail ;  indeed,  close  study  reveals  the 
presence  of  a  delicate,  intricate  mechanism,  so 
shielded  by  the  art  of  the  dramatist  as  to  illude 
us  into  believing  that  we  are  in  the  presence  of 
169 


ICONOCLASTS 

unreasoned  reality.  Setting  aside  his  pessimism, 
his  harsh  handling  of  character,  his  seeming 
want  of  sympathy,  —  a  true  objectivity,  for  he 
never  takes  sides  with  his  characters,  —  Becque 
is  as  much  a  man  of  the  theatre  as  Sardou.  He 
saw  the  mad  futility  of  the  literary  men  who  in- 
vaded the  theatre  full  of  arrogant  belief  in  their 
formulas,  in  their  newer  conventions  that  would 
have  supplanted  older  ones.  A  practical  play- 
wright, our  author  had  no  patience  with  those 
who  attempted  to  dispense  with  the  frame  of  the 
footlights,  who  would  turn  the  playhouse  into  a 
literary  farm  through  which  would  gambol  all 
sorts  of  incompetents  masquerading  as  original 
dramatic  thinkers. 

Becque's  major  quality  is  his  gift  of  lifelike 
characterization.  Character  with  him  is  of  prime 
importance.  He  did  not  tear  down  the  structure 
of  the  drama  but  merely  removed  much  of  the 
scaffolding  which  time  had  allowed  to  disfigure 
its  facade.  While  Zola  and  the  rest  were  devising 
methods  for  doing  away  with  the  formal  drama, 
Becque  sat  reading  Moliere.  Moliere  is  his  real 
master  —  Moliere  and  life,  as  Augustin  Filon 
truthfully  says.  In  his  endeavour  to  put  before 
us  his  people  in  a  simple,  direct  way  he  did 
smash  several  conventions.  He  usually  lands 
his  audience  in  the  middle  of  the  action,  omit- 
ting the  old-fashioned  exposition  act,  careful 
preparation,  and  sometimes  development,  as  we 
know  it  in  the  well-regulated  drama.  But  search 
for  his  reasons  and  they  are  not  long  concealed. 
170 


HENRY   BECQUE 

Logical  he  is,  though  it  is  not  the  cruel  logic 
of  Paul  Hervieu,  his  most  distinguished  artistic 
descendant.  The  logic  of  Becque's  events  must 
retire  before  the  logic  of  his  characters,  that  is 
all.  Humanity,  then,  is  his  chief  concern.  He 
cares  little  for  literary  style.  He  is  not  a  stylist, 
though  he  has  style  —  the  stark,  individual  style 
of  Henry  Becque. 

Complications,  catastrophe,  denouement,  all 
these  are  attenuated  in  the  Becque  plays.  At- 
mosphere supplies  the  exposition,  character 
painting,  action.  The  impersonality  of  the 
dramatist  is  profound.  If  he  had  projected 
himself  or  his  views  upon  the  scene,  then  we 
would  have  been  back  with  Dumas  and  his 
preachments.  Are  we  returning  to  the  Moliere 
comedy  of  character  ?  Movement  in  the  ac- 
cepted sense  there  is  but  little.  Treatment  and 
interpretation  have  been  whittled  away  to  a 
mere  profile,  so  that  in  the  Antoine  repertory 
the  anecdote  bluntly  expressed  and  dumped  on 
the  boards  a  slice  of  real  life  without  comment 
—  without  skill,  one  is  tempted  to  add. 

Becque  was  nearer  classic  form  than  Hervieu, 
Donnay,  De  Curel,  Georges  Ancey,  Leon  Hen- 
nique,  Emile  Fabre,  Maurice  Donnay,  Lemaitre, 
Henri  Lavedan,  and  the  rest  of  the  younger 
group  that  delighted  in  honouring  him  with  the 
title  of  supreme  master.  After  all,  Becque's 
was  a  modified  naturalism.  He  recognized  the 
limitations  of  his  material,  and  subdued  his  hand 
to  them.  M.  Filon  has  pointed  out  that  Becque 
171 


ICONOCLASTS 

and  his  followers  tried  to  bring  their  work  "  into 
line  with  the  philosophy  of  Taine,"  as  Dumas 
and  Augier's  ideas  corresponded  with  those  of 
Victor  Cousin,  the  eclectic  philosopher.  Posi- 
tivism, rather  than  naked  realism,  is  Becque's 
note.  The  cold-blooded  pessimism  that  per- 
vades so  unpleasantly  many  of  his  comedies 
was  the  resultant  of  a  temperament  sorely  tried 
by  experience,  and  one  steeped  in  the  material- 
ism of  the  Second  Empire. 

So  we  get  from  him  the  psychology  of  the 
crowd,  instead  of  the  hero  ego  of  earlier  drama- 
tists. He  contrives  a  dense  atmosphere,  into 
which  he  plunges  his  puppets,  and  often  his 
people  appear  cold,  heartless,  cynical.  He  is  a 
surgeon,  more  like  Ibsen  than  he  would  ever 
acknowledge,  in  his  calm  exposure  of  social 
maladies.  And  what  a  storehouse  have  been 
his  studies  of  character  for  the  generation  suc- 
ceeding him !  Becque  forged  the  formula,  the 
others  but  developed  it. 

The  Becque  plays !  The  last  edition  is  in 
three  volumes  published  by  La  Plume  of  Paris. 
It  begins  with  an  opera  —  fancy  an  opera  by 
this  antagonist  of  romance !  —  entitled  Sar- 
danapale,  in  three  acts,  "  imitated  "  from  Lord 
Byron.  Victorin  Joncieres,  a  composer  of  re- 
spectable ability,  furnished  the  music.  The 
"machine"  was  represented  for  the  first  time 
at  the  Theatre  Lyrique,  February  8,  1867.  It 
need  not  detain  us.  L'Enfant  Prodigue,  a  four- 
act  vaudeville,  saw  the  light,  November  6,  1868, 
172 


HENRY   BECQUE 

at  the  Th^tre  Vaudeville.  It  is  Becque  at  his 
wittiest,  merriest  best.  In  an  unpremeditated 
manner  it  displays  a  mastery  of  intrigue  that  is 
amazing.  For  a  man  who  despised  mere  tech- 
nical display,  this  piece  is  a  shining  exemplar 
of  virtuosity.  Let  those  who  would  throw  stones 
at  Becque's  nihilism  in  the  matter  of  conven- 
tional craftsmanship  read  The  Prodigal  Son  and 
marvel  at  its  swiftness  of  action,  its  stripping 
the  vessel  of  all  unnecessary  canvas,  and  scudding 
along  under  bare  poles  !  The  comedy  is  unfail- 
ing, the  characterization  rich  in  those  cunning 
touches  which  are  like  salt  applied  to  a  smart- 
ing wound.  The  plot  is  slight,  the  adventures 
of  several  provincials  who  visit  Paris  and  there 
become  entangled  in  the  toils  of  a  shrewd  ad- 
venturess. The  underplot  is  woven  skilfully 
into  the  main  texture.  Hypocrisy  is  scourged. 
A  father  and  a  son  discover  that  they  are  trapped 
by  the  same  woman.  There  is  genre  painting 
that  is  Dutch  in  its  admirable  minuteness  and 
truth  ;  a  specimen  is  the  scene  at  the  concierge 's 
dinner.  Wicked  in  the  quality  called  r esprit 
gaulois,  this  farce  is  inimitable  —  and  also  a  trifle 
old-fashioned. 

In  Michel  Pauper,  —  given  at  the  Porte-Saint- 
Martin,  June,  1 870,  —  Becque  was  feeling  his  way 
to  simpler  methods.  The  drama  is  in  five  acts 
and  seven  tableaux  ;  and  while  it  contains  in 
solution  all  of  Becque,  it  may  be  confessed  that 
the  outcome  is  rather  an  indigestible  mess. 
The  brutality  of  the  opening  scenes  is  undeni- 
173 


ICONOCLASTS 

able.  Michel  is  a  clumsy  fellow,  who  does  not 
always  retain  our  sympathy  or  respect.  His 
courtship  has  all  the  delicacy  of  a  peasant  at 
pasture.  But  he  is  alive,  his  is  a  salient  char- 
acter. The  suicide  of  De  La  Roseraye  has  been 
faithfully  copied  by  Donnay  in  La  Douloureuse, 
and  by  many  others  in  Paris,  London,  and  Amer- 
ica. Helene,  poor  girl,  who  is  so  rudely  treated 
by  Comte  de  Rivailler,  would  call  forth  a  smile  on 
the  countenance  of  any  one  when  she  announces 
her  misfortune  in  this  stilted  phraseology,  "  He 
asked  of  his  own  will  what  he  could  not  obtain 
from  mine."  The  ending  has  a  suspicion  of  the 
"  arranged,"  even  of  the  violent  melodramatic. 
And  how  shocking  is  the  fall  of  Helene  !  She 
is  the  first  of  the  Becque  cerebral  female  mon- 
sters, though  she  has  at  least  more  blood  than 
some  of  his  later  creations.  She  loves  the 
Count  —  the  shadow  of  an  excuse  for  her  de- 
struction of  her  noble-minded  husband.  How- 
ever, one  does  not  read  Michel  Pauper  for 
amusement. 

It  is  in  L'Enlevement  that  we  find  Becque 
managing  with  consummate  address  a  genuine 
problem.  It  was  produced  at  the  Vaudeville, 
November  18,  1871.  The  three  acts  pass  at  a 
chateau  in  the  provinces.  Emma  de  Sainte- 
Croix,  rather  than  endure  the  neglect  and  in- 
fidelities of  her  husband,  lives  in  dignified 
retirement  with  her  mother-in-law.  She  is  a 
femme  savante,  though  not  of  the  odious  blue- 
stocking variety.  She  has  a  daily  visitor  in  the 
174 


HENRY   BECQUE 

person  of  a  cultivated  man  who  resides  in  the 
neighbourhood.  At  once  we  are  submerged  in 
a  situation.  De  La  Rouvre  loves  Emma.  He, 
too,  has  been  wretchedly  mismated.  His  wife 
was  a  despicable  voluptuary  who  cheated  him 
with  his  domestics.  He  begs  Emma  to  secure 
a  divorce  from  her  pleasure-loving  husband. 
She  refuses.  She  loathes  the  divorce  courts. 
She  loathes  vulgar  publicity.  He  proposes  an 
elopement  and  is  sharply  brought  to  his  senses 
by  the  woman.  She  loves  the  proprieties  too 
much  to  indulge  in  romantic  adventures,  and 
has  she  not  suffered  enough  through  this  love 
illusion?  Her  mother-in-law  does  not  approve 
of  the  man's  presence.  Her  son  is  always  her 
son,  and  she  hopes  for  reconciliation.  If  only 
Emma  would  be  a  little  more  lenient ! 

The  prodigal  husband  returns.  He  is  an 
admirable  blackguard  who  respects  neither  his 
own  honour  nor  that  of  his  family.  He  flirts  with 
his  wife  at  his  mother's  instigation,  but  his  heart 
is  not  in  the  game.  Descends  upon  him  one  of 
his  lady  loves.  She  invades  the  chateau  and  is 
introduced  to  his  wife  as  a  supposedly  casual 
passer-by.  But  she  is  detected  as  the  worthless 
spouse  of  De  La  Rouvre.  There  is  a  scene. 
Later  Raoul,  the  husband,  forces  his  way  into 
his  wife's  bedchamber  and  the  episode  on 
reading  recalls  Paul  Hervieu's  Le  Dedale.  The 
outcome,  however,  is  different.  Repulsed,  the 
husband  curses  his  wife,  and  she  departs  for 
India,  elopes  with  her  lover.  Terse  in  dialogue, 
175 


ICONOCLASTS 

compact  in  construction,  L'Enlevement  contains 
some  of  the  best  of  Becque.  Ibsen  and  Dumas 
are  writ  large  in  the  general  plan  and  denoue- 
ment, though  the  character  drawing  is  wholly 
Becque's.  Despite  his  economy  of  action  and 
speech,  he  seldom  gives  one  the  feeling  of 
abruptness  in  transitional  passages.  His  scenes 
melt  one  into  the  other  without  a  jar,  and  only 
after  you  have  read  or  watched  one  of  his  plays 
do  you  realize  the  labour  involved  to  produce  such 
an  illusion  of  life  while  disguising  the  controlling 
mechanism.  All  the  familiar  points  de  repbres, 
the  little  tricks  so  dear  to  the  average  play- 
maker,  are  absent.  Becque  conceals  his  tech- 
nical processes,  and  in  that  sense  he  has  great 
art,  though  often  seeming  quite  artless.  And 
L'Enlevement  is  more  than  a  picture  of  man- 
ners ;  it  is  as  definitely  a  problem  play  as  A 
Doll's  House.  Only  after  being  driven  to  it 
does  Emma  revolt.  She  is  a  revoltie  of  the 
cerebral  type.  The  crowning  insult  is  the  at- 
tempt made  upon  her  right  to  her  person. 
Hervieu's  heroine  is  passional,  and  it  accounts 
for  her  lapse.  We  feel  for  her  acutely.  Emma's 
departure  is  logical. 

With  La  Parisienne,  Becque  is  once  more  on 
his  own  ground.  Paris  and  its  cynical  view  of 
the  relations  of  the  sexes  is  embodied  in  this 
diabolically  adroit  and  disconcerting  comedy  — 
represented  for  the  first  time  at  the  Com6die- 
Franc^aise,  September  14,  1882,  and  reviewed  at 
the  Ode"on,  November  3,  1897.  The  play  is  full 
176  " 


HENRY   BECQUE 

of  a  blague  now  slightly  outmoded,  but  the  types 
remain  eternally  true  —  those  of  the  Parisian 
triangle.  Only  this  three-cornered,  even  four- 
cornered,  arrangement  (for  there  are  two  "  dear 
friends  ")  is  played  with  amazing  variations. 

Clotilde  du  Mesnil  and  Lafont  are  quarrelling 
over  a  letter  when  the  curtain  rises.  He  adjures 
her  to  resist  temptation.  "  Resist,  Clotilde  ;  that 
is  the  only  honourable  course,  and  the  only  course 
worthy  of  you."  She  must  remain  dignified,  hon- 
ourable, the  pride  of  her  husband.  Suddenly, 
in  the  midst  of  this  ignoble  squabble,  she  cries, 
"  Prenez  garde,  voila,  mon  mari !  "  Up  to  rhis 
moment  the  audience  fancies  that  it  has  been 
witnessing  a  marital  row.  The  shock  is  tre- 
mendous when  the  truth  is  learned.  Nor  are 
your  feelings  spared  when  later  you  hear  Clotilde 
accuse  Lafont  of  not  being  fond  of  her  husband. 
The  two  wrangle  over  the  accusation.  In  an- 
other speech  she  exclaims  :  "  Vous  etes  un  libre 
penseur !  Je  crois  que  vous  vous  entendriez  tres 
bien  avec  une  maitresse  qui  n'aurait  pas  de 
religion,  quelle  horreur !  "  This  extremely  naive 
statement  reveals  to  us  the  land  on  the  other  side 
of  good  and  evil  in  which  dwell  Becque's  char- 
acters. Are  they  even  cynical  ?  Hardly,  for 
there  is  no  mockery,  no  parade  of  immorality, 
no  speeches  with  equivocal  meanings.  The 
calm  assumption  of  external  decency  is  merely 
a  reversion  to  the  baldest  paganism.  It  is  the 
modern  over-cynicism.  These  people  are  so  bad 
that,  paradoxical  as  it  may  sound,  they  are  good, 
177 


ICONOCLASTS 

Certainly  they  are  more  refreshing  and  infinitely 
more  moral  than  that  wretched  Camille,  with 
her  repentant  whimperings  and  her  nauseating 
speeches  about  soiled  doves  and  their  redemp- 
tion. 

And  Lafont,  stupid,  loving,  honest  according 
to  his  lights,  Lafont  so  marvellously  presented 
by  Antoine,  is  he  not  a  being  who  lives !  Clotilde 
as  incarnated  by  Re" jane  is  the  worldling,  neither 
stupid  nor  witty.  She  is  simply  a  good-natured, 
vain  woman,  who  deceives  her  husband  and  lover 
as  naturally  as  she  breathes. 

Clotilde  takes  on  a  new  amant,  who  treats 
her  as  badly  as  she  treated  Lafont.  Deserted, 
she  picks  up  the  old  thread  and  begins  to  live 
as  before.  As  Mrs.  Craigie  says  of  this  play : 
"  There  are  critics  who  mistaking  the  situa- 
tion for  the  philosophy  have  called  this  piece 
immoral.  One  would  as  soon  call  Georges 
Dandin  or  Tom  Jones  immoral.  A  true  book,  a 
true  play,  cannot  be  otherwise  than  moral.  It 
is  the  false  picture  —  no  matter  how  pretty  — 
which  makes  for  immorality." 

Throughout,  these  lovers  quarrel  like  married 
folk.  The  social  balance  is  upset,  domestic 
virtues  topsy-turvied.  And  yet  the  merciless 
stripping  of  the  conventional  romance,  —  the 
deluded  husband,  unhappy  wife,  and  charming 
consoler  of  the  afflicted,  —  these  old  properties 
of  Gallic  comedy  are  cast  into  the  dust-bin. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  since  La  Parisienne  no 
French  dramatic  author  has  had  the  courage 
178 


HENRY   BECQUE 

to  revive  the  sentimental  triangle  as  it  was 
before  this  comedy  was  written.  If  he  ven- 
tured to,  he  would  be  laughed  off  the  stage. 
And  for  suppressing  the  sentimental  married 
harlot  let  us  be  thankful  to  the  memory  of 
Becque. 

Les  Corbeaux  is  unique  in  modern  comedy. 
Never  played,  to  my  knowledge,  in  English,  its 
ideas,  its  characterization,  its  ground-plan,  have 
been  often  ruthlessly  appropriated.  The  verb  "to 
steal"  is  never  conjugated  in  theatreland.  Yet 
this  play's  simplicity  is  appealing.  A  loving 
father  of  a  family,  a  good-tempered  bourgeois, 
dies  suddenly.  His  affairs  turn  Out  badly.  His 
widow  and  three  daughters  fall  into  the  hands 
of  the  ravens,  the  partner  of  their  father,  his 
lawyer,  his  architect,  and  a  motley  crew  of 
tradespeople.  Ungrateful  matter  this  for  dra- 
matic purposes.  Scene  by  scene  Becque  exposes 
the  outer  and  inner  life  of  these  defenceless 
women  and  their  secret  and  malign  persecu- 
tors. Every  character  is  an  elaborate  portrait. 
Naturally,  the  family  go  to  the  dogs,  and  the 
wickedest  villain  of  the  lot  catches  in  marriage 
the  flower  of  the  unhappy  flock.  His  final 
speech  is  sublime,  "My  child,  since  your  father's 
death  you  were  hemmed  in  by  a  lot  of  designing 
scoundrels."  And  by  inference  he  pats  himself 
on  the  back,  he,  the  worst  scoundrel  of  all. 
If  you  tell  me  that  the  theme  is  not  a  pleasant 
or  suitable  one  for  the  drama,  I  shall  recommend 
you  to  the  spirit  of  the  late  Henry  Becque  for 
179 


ICONOCLASTS 

answer.     Les  Corbeaux  is  the  bible  of  the  dra- 
matic realists. 

Remain  seven  small  pieces,  principally  in  one 
act.  La  Navette  is  wicked  —  and  amusing.  It 
aims  at  nothing  else.  Les  Honnetes  Femmes 
might  have  been  written  by  Dumas.  It  is  a 
sugar-coated  sermon  extemporized  by  a  young 
married  woman  for  the  benefit  of  a  presumptive 
lover.  She  finds  him  a  bride,  and  the  curtain 
falls.  Le  Depart  is  of  sterner  metal.  Here 
Becque  beats  Zola  at  his  own  game.  The  scene 
represents  a  working  girl's  atelier  in  a  Parisian 
store.  The  various  women  are  clearly  outlined, 
so  clearly  that  Huysmans  in  Soeurs  Vatard  is 
recalled.  One  girl  is  honest.  She  is  honourable 
enough  to  refuse  an  offer  of  marriage  made  by 
the  foolish  young  son  of  the  proprietor,  and  for 
this  wisdom  receives  insults  from  the  father  and 
is  finally  discharged  for  being  too  virtuous.  She 
then  incontinently  goes  to  the  devil.  The 
devastating  irony  of  the  dramatist  illuminates 
this  little  piece  with  sinister  effect.  And  the 
moral  is  never  far  to  seek  in  Becque  —  perhaps 
a  twisted  moral,  yet  not  altogether  a  negligible 
one.  In  Veuve  we  find  our  old  friend  Clotilde 
of  La  Parisienne,  now  a  widow.  Her  behaviour 
to  her  faithful  admirer  is  a  study  of  feminine 
malice,  not  only  seen  "  through  a  temperament," 
but  the  outcome  of  unerring  observation.  Made- 
leine is  a  depressing  sketch  of  a  woman  with  a 
past  who  is  educating  her  child  at  a  convent 
It  has  poignant  moments.  The  other  two  little 
1 80 


HENRY   BECQUE 

affairs,  Le  Domino  a  Quart  and  Une  Execution, 
are  exercises  in  pure  humour  of  the  volatile 
Parisian  sort. 

Becque's  touch  is  light  in  comedy,  rather 
clumsy  in  set  drama.  He  is,  as  a  rule,  without 
charm,  and  he  never  indulges  in  mock  pathos  or 
cheap  poetic  flights.  He  excelled  in  depicting 
manners,  and  his  dramatic  method,  as  I  have 
endeavoured  to  show,  was  direct  and  free  from 
antique  rhetoric  and  romantic  turgidities.  He 
has  been  superseded  by  a  more  comprehensive 
synthesis;  France  is  become  weary  of  the  cyni 
cal  sinners  —  yet  that  does  not  invalidate  the 
high  ranking  of  this  man  of  genius.  Whatever 
may  be  his  deficiencies  in  the  purely  spiritual, 
Henry  Becque  will  ever  remain  a  command- 
ing figure  in  the  battalion  of  brilliant  French 
dramatists. 


181 


IV 

GERHART    HAUPTMANN 

Der  Mensch,  das  ist  ein  Ding 
Das  sich  von  ungefahr  bei  uns  verfing  : 
Von  dieser  Welt  und  doch  auch  nicht  von  ihr : 
Zur  Halfte  —  wo  ?  wer  weiss  ?  —  zur  Halfte  hier. 
Halb  unser  Bruder  und  aus  uns  Geboren 
Uns  feind  und  freund  zur  Halfte  und  verloren. 

—  Die  Versunkene  Glocke. 

IN  the  figure  of  Gerhart  Hauptmann  we 
encounter  a  man  of  genius,  a  man  of  Euro- 
pean significance,  and  more  than  the  standard- 
bearer  of  Young  Germany.  True,  Hauptmann 
did  graduate  from  the  seminary  of  the  real- 
ists, —  the  heads  of  which  were  Arno  Holz  and 
Johannes  Schlaf,  —  writing,  under  the  name  of 
Bjarne  P.  Holmsen,  that  delectable,  ironic  fan- 
tasy, Papa  Hamlet  But  the  dramatic  poetic 
instincts  of  the  Silesian  youth  —  he  was  born 
at  Salzbrunn,  1862,  the  son  of  a  hotel-keeper  — 
were  not  long  to  be  penned  behind  the  bars  of 
a  formula.  As  in  Goethe's  Faust,  two  spirits 
travailed  furiously  within  him.  Ultra-idealist 
in  his  boyhood,  he  suffered  from  the  green- 
sickness of  Byronism,  and  wrote  poems  in  imi- 
tation of  Byron,  Hebbel,  Schiller.  He  studied 
sculpture  at  Rome  for  a  time  and  set  up  an 
182 


GERHART   HAUPTMANN 

atelier  there.  His  epic,  Promethidenlos  (1885), 
was  as  subjective  as  a  restless,  unhappy  young 
man  of  twenty-three  could  make  it.  Yet  there 
is  no  mistaking  the  chord  set  clanging  by  its 
immature  music  —  the  chord  of  sympathy  with 
human  suffering,  the  true  Hauptmann  leit  motiv 
that  may  be  equally  heard  in  his  first  drama, 
Before  Sunrise,  and  in  his  latest,  Rose  Bernd. 
The  critical  allotment  of  Hauptmann  to  the 
Ibsen  domain  is  easy,  too  easy ;  he  has  been 
greatly  influenced  by  the  "  red  star  of  the 
north,"  though  it  has  not  been  a  baleful  one. 
He  owes  as  much  to  Zola  as  to  Ibsen,  as  Zola 
owes  in  his  turn  much  to  Victor  Hugo  and  Jean 
Jacques  Rousseau.  Young  Germany  itself,  Karl 
Bleibtreu,  Conrad  Alberti,  Sudermann,  Halbe, 
Conradi,  Kretzer,  and  the  rest  were  in  the  fash- 
ioning of  the  Freie  Bilhne  heavily  indebted  to 
Antoine  and  his  revolutionary  Theatre  Libre. 
Under  the  spell  of  the  mystic  and  lyric  prose 
of  Friedrich  Nietzsche  —  surely  among  the 
most  musical  that  issued  from  German  lips  — 
individualism  became  an  all-absorbing  element 
in  the  production  of  art  works.  It  was  the  old 
leaven  of  Max  Stirner  and  his  Der  Einzige.  John 
Henry  Mackay,  the  Scotch-German,  hymned  in 
almost  delirious  verse  the  rights  of  the  Ego ; 
even  the  cool-headed  East  Prussian  Sudermann 
felt  the  impact  of  this  lyric  anarchism  when 
he  published  his  Three  Heron  Feathers.  As  to 
Hauptmann,  whose  lyre  was  ever  more  sensi- 
tive to  the  mobility  of  the  moral  atmosphere, 
183 


ICONOCLASTS 

this  wind  of  individualism  swept  him  along  and 
he  wrote  Before  Sunrise.  It  was  produced  in 
1889,  and  at  once  its  author  was  recognized  as 
a  force. 

Socialistic,  this  play  is  almost  as  rank  as  La 
Terre.  Technically  it  has  many  weak  spots, 
but  the  basic  idea  is  capital.  The  Krauses, 
suddenly  come  into  money,  afforded  the  drama- 
tist opportunities  for  his  still  immature  but  pro- 
foundly true  gifts  of  characterization.  It  is  a 
depressing  crowd  he  sets  before  us,  drunken- 
ness being  the  least  of  its  defects.  Helene 
Krause  is  betrothed  to  the  lover  of  her  step- 
mother, and  when  Alfred  Loth,  a  high-minded 
socialist,  appears,  she  naturally  falls  in  love  with 
him.  Loth,  warned  by  a  doctor  —  an  excel- 
lently conceived  character  —  that  it  were  insane 
to  marry  into  a  tainted  family,  leaves  a  letter 
for  Helene  and  vanishes.  She  promptly  kills 
herself.  The  final  curtain  is  harrowing.  There 
is  exaggerated  realism  and  also  that  curious 
tendency,  which  has  developed  instead  of  abat- 
ing, of  dealing  with  depraved  types.  Friedens- 
fest  (1890),  which  followed,  begins  to  show 
Hauptmann  more  conscious  of  his  own  talents. 
The  Scholz  family  is  accurately  studied  and 
presented.  The  denouement  baldly  stated  — • 
an  unhappy  father  come  home  to  die  in  a 
household  from  which  he  has  been  banished 
by  his  conduct  —  smacks  of  German  sentimen. 
tality.  Here  the  poet  demonstrated  that  all 
lies  in  the  individual  handling  of  the  theme. 
184 


GERHART   HAUPTMANN 

The  moral  is  "  Peace  on  earth,  good  will  to 
men,"  and  this  unhappy  pessimistic  family  is 
made  to  realize  the  strength  of  the  collectivist 
ideal.  The  same  year  Einsame  Menschen  ap- 
peared, in  which  Ibsen's  influence  is  paramount. 
It  reads  like  a  variant  of  Rosmersholm,  diluted 
though  it  be.  If  it  proves  anything,  it  is  that 
the  unpurified  is  to  be  distrusted  because  it 
brings  unhappiness  in  its  train.  The  Vockerat 
family  is  a  fairly  contented  group  until  the 
appearance  of  Anna  Mahr,  a  young  woman 
from  Zurich  University  who  has  absorbed  the 
unsettling  culture  of  the  day.  She  speedily  un- 
seats the  judgment  of  John  Volkerat,  and  in 
becoming  his  affinity  she  makes  him  neglect 
his  lovely  wife.  It  is  all  so  Ibsenian  that  we 
note  with  a  sense  of  the  incongruous  the  scene 
of  the  action,  the  Miiggelsee  near  Berlin.  John 
hates  the  religion  of  his  parents,  becomes  es- 
tranged from  these  kindly  folk,  throws  himself 
on  the  mercy  of  Anna,  who,  after  lecturing  him 
in  the  true-blue  cerebral  style  of  the  emanci- 
pated woman,  goes  away.  Distracted,  the  young 
man  drowns  himself. 

Notwithstanding  technical  and  psychologic 
advances,  this  effort  is  not  so  convincing  as 
Before  Sunrise.  One  feels  the  thesis  prepared, 
the  task  attacked,  and  not  the  spontaneous  work 
of  art.  Charles  Henry  Meltzer,  Hauptmann's 
friend  and  English  translator,  declares  that 
Before  Sunrise  was  written  while  the  poet  was 
still  filled  with  admiration  of  Tolstoy's  Dominion 
185 


ICONOCLASTS 

of  Darkness,  and  after  many  conversations  with 
Arno  Holz  and  Bruno  Wille,  the  socialist.  In  one 
respect  it  is  very  remarkable  —  the  evocation 
of  atmosphere.  And  some  critics  see  in  Anna 
Mahr  a  forerunner  to  Hilda  Wangel  of  The 
Master  Builder. 

When,  however,  Die  Weber  was  printed  ( 1 892), 
all  Germany  knew  that  the  master  had  appeared. 
It  was  not  until  February,  1893,  that  the  first 
performances  took  place  on  the  Freie  Biihne, 
Deutsches  Theatre,  Berlin.  The  drama  stands 
at  the  parting  of  the  ways.  Not  since  Wagner's 
Die  Meistersinger  had  such  an  attempt  been  made 
to  clear  the  German  stage  of  its  gingerbread  rhet- 
oric, its  pasteboard  mock-antiques,  its  moonshine 
romantics.  And  while  the  Wagner  comedy  was 
all  grace,  sweetness,  and  light  and  only  epical 
in  its  vast  machinery  of  narration,  The  Weavers 
was  a  quivering  transcript  from  life  —  and  such 
life !  Germany  took  fire  from  the  blaze  of  the 
dramatist's  generous  wrath.  Socialism  or  an- 
archy, what  you  will,  were  swallowed  up  in  the 
presentment  of  this  veracious  document  of 
wretched  lives.  Yet,  while  its  tendenz  is  unmis- 
takably an  arraignment  of  the  wealthy  classes, 
of  the  bourgeois  master  weavers,  as  is  Zola's 
stern  denunciation  in  Germinal  of  unfeeling 
mine  owners,  Hauptmann,  being  the  finer  artist, 
does  not  drive  his  lesson  home  with  a  moral 
sledge-hammer.  He  paints  the  picture ;  his  au- 
dience finds  the  indictment.  Here  is  a  new 
German  art  at  last. 

186 


GERHART   HAUPTMANN 

And  not  altogether  unprepared  for  this  violent 
drama  should  have  been  his  admirers.  His  short 
nouvelle,  Bahnwarter  Thiel,  is  full  of  pity  for 
the  downtrodden.  This  story  sounds  like  a  trans- 
position of  a  Zola  melodrama  to  a  finer  key.  The 
companion  tale  in  the  same  volume,  The  Apostle, 
might  have  been  written  by  DostoTevsky. 

In  Die  Weber,  —  or  De  Waber,  as  it  is  called 
in  the  patois  of  Silesia,  —  Hauptmann  is  for  the 
first  time  Hauptmann.  Zola  and  Ibsen  are  no 
longer  felt,  for  the  resemblance  to  An  Enemy 
of  the  People  is  of  the  vaguest.  Henceforth  it 
is  the  masses,  not  the  individual.  Raised  in  the 
weaving  districts  of  Silesia,  his  grandfather  a 
weaver  and  a  witness  of  a  similar  strike  with  its 
dire  consequences,  —  Robert  Hauptmann,  his 
father,  also  sat  at  the  loom — -the  subject  was 
one  that  could  be  treated  with  epic  breadth  and 
eloquence  by  the  poet.  The  mob  is  the  hero, 
for  old  Hilfe  is  only  a  representative  of  his  class. 
Baumert  the  soldier,  Ansorge,  the  women,  the 
blind  wife,  and  the  climax  where  old  Hilfe  is 
dead  and  the  little  Mielchen  tells  with  babyish 
joy  the  story  of  the  shooting  —  every  character, 
every  incident,  rings  true,  and  rang  so  widely 
and  so  well  that  it  set  pealing  the  bells  of  the 
world.  If  Hauptmann  had  died  after  writing 
Die  Weber,  he  would  have  been  acclaimed  a 
great  dramatist. 

It  was  Matthew  Arnold  who  Englished 
Joubert's  soul's  cry,  "You  hurt  me!"  In  this 
moving  and  gloomy  and  largely  planned  tragedy 
187 


ICONOCLASTS 

of  the  lowly,  Hauptmann  holds  no  brief  for  an- 
archy, plays  upon  no  class  sentiment.  He  seems 
as  objective  as  Flaubert,  yet  no  play  that  I  ever 
witnessed  is  such  a  judgment  of  man  and  his 
cruelty  to  his  fellow-beings. 

The  ancients,  who  sounded  the  abysmal  depths 
of  despair,  crime,  and  terror,  nevertheless  con- 
trived some  relief ;  if  no  other,  the  artistic  form 
itself  palliated  the  awful  content  of  a  tragedy  of 
^schylus.  But  Hauptmann,  with  absolute  in- 
difference to  our  moral  epidermis,  strips  bare  for 
us  human  nature,  and  we  revolt  naturally  enough. 
The  truth,  naked  and  unadorned,  is  always  un- 
pleasant. Pascal  once  wrote :  "  When  I  see 
the  blindness  and  the  misery  of  man ;  when  I 
survey  the  whole  dumb  universe  and  man  with- 
out light,  left  to  himself  and  lost,  as  it  were,  in 
this  corner  of  the  universe,  not  knowing  who 
placed  him  here,  what  he  has  come  to  do,  what 
will  become,  of  him  when  he  dies,  and  incapable 
of  any  knowledge  whatever,  I  fall  into  terror, 
like  that  of  a  man  who,  having  been  carried  in 
his  sleep  to  an  island,  desert  and  terrible,  should 
awake  ignorant  of  his  whereabouts  and  with  no 
means  of  escape,  and  therefore  I  wonder  how 
those  in  so  miserable  a  state  do  not  fall  into 
despair."  What  would  he  not  have  written  after 
witnessing  this  play  ? 

The  Weavers  is  a  parable.  The  Weavers  is  a 
symphony  in  five  movements,  with  one  grim,  lead- 
ing motive  —  hunger.  In  every  act  you  hear  that 
ominous,  that  sickening  word  "hunger."  The 
188 


GERHART    HAUPTMANN 

necessity  of  such  a  play  is  chilling  to  our  pam- 
pered and  capricious  appetites.  Hunger  !  What 
a  horrible  theme  for  an  art  work !  The  north- 
ern novelist,  Knut  Hamsum,  has  in  a  more  per- 
sonal style  used  the  same  theme.  We  love 
blithe  art,  art  imbued  with  deep  serenity,  — 
heiterkeit,  Winckelmann  called  it,  —  so  away  with 
this  grim  phantom,  evoked  by  a  ruthless  imagi- 
nation! But  what  if  it  be  true  ?  That  is  the  affair 
of  the  Commissioner  of  Charities.  We  pay  our 
taxes.  Go  to,  Herr  Hauptmann,  go  to !  We 
prefer  illusionists,  not  unmaskers  of  grim  truths. 
Yet  hunger! 

"There  is,"  wrote  Thomas  Hardy,  "a  size  at 
which  dignity  begins ;  farther  on  there  is  a  size 
at  which  grandeur  begins ;  farther  on  there  is  a 
size  at  which  solemnity  begins  ;  farther  on  a  size 
at  which  ghastliness  begins." 

The  novelist  was  speaking  of  the  interstellar 
universe.  In  Die  Weber  there  are  depths  where 
ghastliness  begins.  It  is  not  a  play,  it  is  a  chorale 
of  woe,  malediction,  and  want.  The  people,  hardly 
civilized,  are  put  before  us,  a  marvellous  vitascope 
of  pain  and  disease.  What  avails  criticism  before 
such  a  spectacle  ? 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  recapitulate  the 
grewsome  story  of  this  play — how  the  weavers 
starved,  how  the  weavers  revolted,  and  that 
wonderful  ending,  old  age  stiffened  in  death 
and  childhood  merrily  unconscious.  It  recalls 
Victor  Hugo's  precipice  with  its  single  cran- 
nied rose  in  full  bloom.  And  The  Weavers 
189 


ICONOCLASTS 

was  the  first  modern  play  that  deals  with  the 
life  of  the  proletarians. 

College  Crampton  (1892),  Der  Biberpelz 
(1893),  Hannele  (1893),  Florian  Geyer  (1896), 
Die  Versunkene  Glocke(i897),  Fuhrmann  Hen- 
schel(i898),  Schluck  und  Jau  (1900),  Michael 
Kramer  (1900),  Der  rote  Hahn  (1901),  Der 
Arme  Heinrich  (1902),  Rose  Bernd  (1903), 
complete  the  list  thus  far  of  this  fecund  and 
remarkable  man.  He  has  felt  his  way  through 
naturalistic  drama  to  comedy,  and  in  the  latter 
without  much  success;  and  from  comedy  to 
historical  drama,  with  no  success  at  all;  in- 
deed, Florian  Geyer  was  a  failure,  though  in  its 
amended  version  as  given  last  October  22,  in 
Berlin,  at  the  Lessing  Theatre,  it  won  approval, 
critical  and  popular.  The  poet  has  written  a 
new  five-act  comedy  for  the  same  theatre,  which 
he  calls  The  Merry  Maiden  of  Bishopsberg. 

The  Beaver-Coat  and  The  Red  Cock  — the 
symbol  of  fire  —  are  folk-plays,  the  comedy 
rather  grim,  the  sense  of  actuality  strong.  The 
first  is  a  "  thieves'  comedy  "  and  the  fooling  is 
heavy  enough  in  both  pieces ;  the  latter  is  a 
continuation.  German  officialism  is  parodied. 
Schluck  und  Jau  was  also  a  failure.  Written 
partially  in  prose  and  verse,  it  recalls  Calderon, 
Grillparzer,  Shakespeare's  prologue  to  The  Tam- 
ing of  the  Shrew,  and  Hauptmann  himself.  Al- 
though Fuhrmann  Henschel  followed  Hannele 
and  The  Sunken  Bell,  we  prefer  to  speak  of  it  and 
several  other  plays  before  those  two  masterpieces. 
190 


GERHART   HAUPTMANN 

Wagoner  Henschel  was  a  surprise  and  a  deep 
disappointment  to  many  of  Hauptmann's  admir- 
ers. He  seemed  to  return  to  the  most  sordid 
of  topics,  yet  it  contains  passages  of  spiritual 
beauty ;  while  as  a  whole  the  note  it  sounds  is 
a  supernatural  one,  despite  the  vileness  of  its 
surroundings.  The  psychologic  depiction  of 
Henschel's  downfall  is  masterly.  He  is  a  stolid 
teamster  whose  first  wife  in  her  death-bed  makes 
him  promise  not  to  marry  the  servant  girl, 
Hanna  Scholl.  But  he  does,  for  some  one  must 
look  after  his  daughter.  The  moral  dtgringolade 
begins.  The  woman  is  a  vicious  slattern.  She 
is  unfaithful.  Things  go  badly.  Henschel 
comes  to  believe  that  his  first  wife  haunts  him, 
and  kills  himself.  It  is  very  morbid,  but  it  fits 
in  the  Hauptmann  scheme,  as  Professor  J.  F. 
Coar  in  his  Studies  in  German  Literature  shows  : 
"  Hannele  contrasted  spiritual  consciousness  with 
moral  consciousness.  And  Henry  in  The  Sunken 
Bell  fails  because  he  attempts  what  his  creator, 
Hauptmann,  attempted  in  Hannele.  How,  then, 
shall  a  poet  find  his  quest  rewarded?  Only 
by  seeking  the  spiritual  mirrored  in  the  moral. 
Hauptmann  is  far  from  having  such  a  vision  in 
Teamster  Henschel;  still  he  is  to  be  credited 
with  the  effort  to  obtain  it.  Again,  he  could 
only  see  the  misery  of  life.  ...  In  constantly 
narrowing  circles  the  thoughts  of  Henschel  turn 
about  the  one  tense  feeling  of  wrong  committed 
when  he  married  again  in  violation  of  his  promise. 
The  infidelity  of  the  second  wife  appears  to  him 
191 


ICONOCLASTS 

like  the  judgment  of  God.  ...  At  night  the 
figure  of  his  dead  wife  lies  down  with  him.  .  .  . 
There  is  no  trace  of  dialectical  reasoning  in  this 
simple  Silesian  teamster.  He  stands  facing  ex- 
istence without  the  ability  to  apply  his  reason  to 
anything  but  the  humdrum  affairs  of  life.  Once 
forced  beyond  the  bounds  of  these,  reason  gives 
way,  and  he  is  gradually  led  into  a  pessimistic 
fatalism  from  which  there  is  no  escape.  But  to 
create  by  transforming  spiritual  life  into  moral 
action  is  the  law  of  individual  existence,  and 
men,  as  Hauptmann  sees  them,  are  in  the  world 
for  this  purpose." 

On  the  material  side  Fuhrmann  Henschel 
might  be  called  a  drama  of  insomnia.  The  major- 
ity of  the  Hauptmann  plays  record  the  struggle 
of  mankind  to  widen  its  spiritual  horizon.  Col- 
lege Crampton  is  an  exception.  It  is  merely 
an  entertaining  piece  shorn  of  tragic  meanings. 
Moreover,  it  contains  some  excellent  comedy 
and  characterization.  The  hero  —  a  sorry  one 
—  drinks.  Michael  Kramer  ends  with  the  sui- 
cide of  a  foolish  talented  young  fellow,  who  is 
jeered  to  the  desperate  deed  by  a  lot  of  idlers  in 
a  Silesian  cafe.  The  types  are  local.  Kramer, 
his  father,  is  an  austere  artist.  The  milieu  is 
the  artistic,  though  as  drama  we  are  never  carried 
off  our  feet.  Loosely  joined  episodes  and  too 
much  dialogue  mar  the  piece.  There  are,  how- 
ever, many  deft  touches,  and  the  scene  wherein 
Kramer  views  his  dead  son  is  full  of  reserve 
power  and  suggestiveness.  Nearly  A!!  these 
192 


GERHART   HAUPTMANN 

plays  enumerated  thus  far  are  irregular  on  the 
constructive  side,  withal  effective  and  human. 
Hauptmann  has  ever  been  careless  in  his  tech- 
nics. The  well-made  play  is  never  in  his 
thoughts,  for  he  works  from  within  to  external 
details.  Even  in  his  imitative  period  he  betrayed 
this  creative  impulse. 

Der  Arme  Heinrich  is  not  Hauptmann  at 
his  happiest,  despite  rare  flashes  of  beauty  and 
power  in  this  replica  of  a  mediaeval  miracle 
play.  The  theme  is  unpleasant,  a  leprous 
knight  rescued  by  the  unselfish  pure  love  of 
a  maiden  —  an  idea  as  old  as  The  Flying  Dutch- 
man, though  set  forth  in  different  terms,  framed 
by  another  environment.  It  is  rather  to  Hannele 
and  Die  Versunkene  Glocke  we  must  turn  for 
the  greater  Hauptmann. 

In  Hannele  and  in  his  other  dramatic  produc- 
tions he  has  proved  himself  to  possess  in  a  con- 
summate degree  the  art  of  arousing  certain 
emotions,  of  presenting  most  vividly  certain 
types  which  have  excited  his  brain  into  abnor- 
mal activity ;  above  all  he  knows  the  art  of  con- 
trasts. He  is  an  idealist,  he  is  a  realist,  he  is 
a  religionist,  he  is  a  natural  philosopher.  After 
carefully  analyzing  Hannele,  on  is  tempted  to 
pronounce  it  the  work  of  a  transcendental 
realist. 

The  play  is  the  history  of  a  child's  soul.  It 
is  a  psychological  study  of  the  brain  of  a  wretched 
little  outcast,  who,  just  before  her  death,  experi- 
ences delirious  trances,  in  v  hich  condition  the 
193 


ICONOCLASTS 

events  and  personages  of  her  unhappy  life  be- 
come objective  visions,  and  these  visions  are 
seen  by  the  audience.  The  story  is  so  simply, 
so  chastely  told  that  one  marvels  effects  can  be 
produced  by  a  verbal  machinery  of  such  sim- 
plicity. The  disgust  inspired  by  the  quarrelling, 
fetid  crew  of  beggars  in  the  almshouse  gives 
way  to  feelings  of  the  most  profound  pity  at  the 
entrance  of  the  poor  little  would-be  suicide. 
Her  first  words,  "  I'm  afraid,"  inspire  sensations 
of  pity  at  her  condition,  and  horror  of  the  brute 
who  drove  her  to  the  commission  of  such  a  des- 
perate deed.  Hauptmann's  touch  is  so  true,  so 
tender,  that  he  evokes  with  ease  the  whole  past 
of  this  wretched  girl,  whose  existence  has  been 
one  of  blows,  curses,  kicks,  and  starvation.  Her 
undeveloped  soul,  cramped  as  it  had  been  by 
her  neglected  life,  has  awakened  under  the 
kindnesses  of  her  teacher  Gottwald,  and  how 
natural  that  he  should  be  invested  by  her  with 
almost  supernatural  attributes ! 

Hauptmann  conveys  all  this  and  more  through 
the  half -scared  utterances  of  Hannele,  who  re- 
fuses to  respond  to  the  pertinacious  question- 
ings of  Magistrate  Berger,  and  only  speaks  when 
Gottwald  asks  her  to.  She  appears  to  be  a  stub- 
born girl,  but  it  is  a  stubbornness  born  of  hard 
beatings  and  harsh  language.  She  has  been  the 
butt  of  the  village  children,  and  the  one  ray  of 
light  which  has  entered  her  life  is  her  teacher, 
and  through  him  some  glimmerings  of  religion. 
Heaven  to  her  is  a  place  all  golden  glory,  whose 
194 


GERHART   HAUPTMANN 

Lord  is  overflowing  with  pity  for  unhappy  chil- 
dren, and  where  she  can  eat,  drink,  and  be 
warm.  She  has  been  half  starved  and  turned 
out  in  the  streets  on  biting  cold  winter  nights. 
It  is  most  natural  that  she  should  long  earnestly 
for  this  heaven,  and  her  appeals  to  be  allowed 
to  die,  so  that  she  could  see  the  Lord,  are  elo- 
quent to  a  degree.  She  is  only  a  beggar  girl, 
this  Hannele,  and  Hauptmann  gives  her  to  us 
in  all  her  rags  and  misery,  and  free  from  mawk- 
ish sentimentality. 

Pity  is  the  dominating  note  of  the  play,  espe- 
cially in  part  first ;  Hannele's  bruised  body, 
shrinking,  sensitive  soul,  arouse  the  deepest 
pity.  The  transition  to  an  atmosphere  where 
the  elements  of  awe  and  fear  enter  is  quietly 
accomplished  by  the  dramatist.  Hannele's  de- 
lirium is  the  medium.  When  she  first  appears 
in  the  strong  arms  of  her  teacher  she  is  numbed 
by  the  icy  waters  of  the  pond,  but  the  warmth 
of  the  hot  drink  and  the  hot  bricks  soon  revive 
her  and  she  wanders  a  little  in  her  speech.  She 
tells  Gottwald  that  it  was  the  Lord  who  beckoned 
to  her  in  the  water,  and  when  she  is  left  alone 
with  Sister  Martha,  she  screams  with  fear  at  the 
sight  of  old  Daddy  Pleschke's  hat  and  coat, 
which  hang  at  the  foot  of  her  miserable  bed. 
The  child  thinks  she  sees  her  stepfather. 

But  mark  the  skill  of  Hauptmann.  After  she 
is  left  alone  her  dreams  begin  to  assume  a  more 
definite  shape,  and  then  we,  sitting  in  the  dark- 
ened auditorium,  see  Mattern,  the  mason,  her 
195 


ICONOCLASTS 

brute  of  a  stepfather,  as  a  vile  nightmare.  He 
acts  and  speaks  to  the  little  form  on  the  bed  as 
he  would  in  real  life,  and  it  writhes  in  agony, 
and  finally  Hannele,  her  brain  on  fire  with  the 
hideous  vision,  awakens  to  his  call,  and  jumps 
tremblingly  out  of  bed,  rushes  into  a  corner  for 
shelter,  and  there  faints. 

The  return  of  Sister  Martha,  the  replacing  of 
Hannele  on  her  couch,  are  followed  by  the  further 
progress  of  the  fever  and  delirium.  Being  alone, 
a  vision  of  her  mother  appears.  It  is  the  most 
striking  of  the  play.  Her  mother  consoles  her, 
speaks  of  heaven  in  tender  and  lofty  imagery, 
and  hints  at  her  suffering  while  alive,  and  just 
grazes  the  subject  of  Hannele's  birth.  Her 
suspected  father  is  the  examining  magistrate 
Berger,  but  the  idea  is  lightly  dwelt  upon  —  suf- 
ficiently, however,  to  give  us  a  glimmer  of  the 
truth  and  adding  a  deeper  accent  to  the  gloom. 
Hannele's  mother  was  hounded  to  her  death  as 
was  this  child.  Her  body,  as  we  know  by  the 
testimony  of  the  wood-cutter,  Seidel,  was  a  mass 
of  bruises  after  death.  The  interview  between 
mother  and  daughter  is  solemn  and  yet  piteously 
human.  The  poor  child  cries  aloud  after  the 
fading  figure  and  later  shows  with  joy  to  Sister 
Martha  the  supposed  flower,  Golden  Sesame, 
which  her  mother  gave  her.  Then  this  tiny 
waif  of  the  gutter  becomes  light-headed  and 
sings  of  flowers,  of  her  teacher,  and  of  the 
angels  she  has  seen.  From  this  delirious 
state  she  never  recovers,  and  her  dreams  take 
196 


GERHART   HAUPTMANN 

on  a  darker   tinge   in   the   second   part  of  the 
play. 

A  great  dark  angel  appears  and  remains  dumb 
to  the  child's  excited  questionings.  Her  visions 
become  involved  here,  for  the  Deaconess  is  also 
seen,  and  while  she  is  habited  as  Sister  Martha, 
her  features  are  those  of  Hannele's  mother. 
The  child  notices  this  and  remarks  upon  it. 
And  now  a  touch  of  Hoffmannish  fantasy  is 
given  in  the  appearance  of  the  village  tailor, 
who  salutes  her  as  the  Princess  Hannele,  and 
delights  her  by  producing  a  shining  robe  and  a 
pair  of  small  slippers.  Although  she  knows 
she  is  preparing  for  her  death-bed,  she  is  de- 
lighted. Her  conversation  with  the  Deaconess 
has  taught  her  that  death  is  not  to  be  avoided 
—  that  it  is  the  gate  to  joys  eternal.  There  is 
something  subtly  sad  in  this  child  eagerly  ask- 
ing about  death  and  the  hereafter,  with  the 
awful  symbol  of  death  sitting  in  grim  silence 
before  her.  Hauptmann  has  deeply  probed  the 
childish  heart.  The  fantastic  tailor  retires  after 
deferentially  saluting  Death,  and  then  some 
children,  headed  by  Gottwald,  enter  and  beg 
Hannele's  pardon  for  calling  her  Princess  Rag- 
tag. Gottwald  is  bidding  her  farewell  when  a 
lot  of  the  village  people  appear,  and  later  the 
crystal  coffin  into  which  Hannele  is  laid.  There 
is  nothing  repulsive  in  all  this,  despite  its  real- 
ism. Hauptmann's  art  is  so  far  removed  from 
the  crude  that  sequence  follows  sequence  in  the 
most  natural  fashion  and  just  as  in  De  Quincey's 
Pream  Fugue.  197 


ICONOCLASTS 

Then  comes  the  most  dramatic  part  of  these 
visions.  Mattern  slouches  in  and  begins  to 
curse  Hannele,  and  to  search  for  her  in  the 
dark  corners.  The  neighbours  cluster  about 
the  coffin,  hiding  it  from  view.  The  stranger 
enters  and  calls  Mattern  to  account.  There  is 
a  scene  between  the  two.  Mattern  denies  hav- 
ing treated  the  child  badly,  and  thunder  and 
lightning  rebuke  him  for  the  lie.  He  perjures 
himself,  and  the  mystic  flower  glows  with  mi- 
raculous light  on  Hannele's  breast.  The  neigh- 
bours, who  play  the  part  of  Greek  chorus, 
fiercely  cry,  "  Murderer  !  murderer !  "  and  as 
one  pursued  by  the  Furies  the  miserable  wretch 
rushes  away  to  hang  himself.  The  stranger 
assumes  a  supernatural  appearance.  He  be- 
comes clothed  in  white,  and  his  brow  shines. 
He  advances  to  the  crystal  basket  wherein  lies 
Hannele,  and  bids  her  arise.  She  does  so,  and 
the  neighbours  flee  affrighted.  Remember  that 
all  this  occurs  within  the  darkened  chambers  of 
Hannele's  sick  brain.  Its  objectivity,  so  far 
as  we  are  concerned,  is  a  device  of  the  drama- 
tist. Hannele  arises  and  goes  to  the  stranger, 
who  is  a  glorified  image  of  her  teacher,  Gott- 
wald.  Some  lyrical  passages,  strongly  tinged 
with  Oriental  colouring,  follow,  and  an  apotheo- 
sis closes  the  scene. 

After  all  this  burst  of  colour  and  harmony,  for 

there   is   much   music    of    harps   and    plucked 

strings,  we  are  almost  instantly  transported  to 

.the   almshouse   again,    and  .see  .Hannele  once 

198 


GERHART   HAUPTMANN 

more  in  her  rags  on  her  squalid  bed.  The 
doctor  gravely  announces,  "  She  is  dead,"  and 
Sister  Martha  ends  the  play  by  saying,  "  She  is 
in  heaven." 

Now  make  of  Hannele  what  you  will.  Con- 
sider it  as  a  plea  against  cruelty  to  children,  as 
a  strong  pictorial  proverb,  anything.  There  is 
symbolism  lurking  in  its  situations.  The  Christ- 
idea  of  pity,  an  idea  new  to  the  pagan  world, 
but  not  new  to  Buddhism,  may  be  considered  as 
the  key-note  of  Hannele.  Religious  it  is  not. 
Blasphemous,  however,  in  intention  it  is  not, 
and  one  fails  to  see  any  similarity  between  it 
and  Jean  Beraud's  picture  of  a  Christ  attired 
in  nineteenth-century  garb  and  with  a  modern 
Magdalen  washing  his  feet. 

Hauptmann  may  tread  on  remarkably  deli- 
cate ground  at  times;  but  his  seriousness  and 
artistic  ingenuity  have  enabled  him  to  produce 
a  most  poetic  analysis  of  a  soul  and  give  it 
dramatic  rhythms.  To  have  the  courage  to  give 
permanent  shape  to  such  a  fantastic  dream 
requires,  besides  imagination,  marked  technical 
abilities. 

To  me  Hannele  seems  like  a  huge  chant  to 
the  glory  of  death.  Death,  "  whose  truer  name 
is  Onward,"  as  sang  the  poet,  is  the  theme,  and 
Death  is  shown  to  be  Lord  and  Master.  Like 
Maeterlinck,  Hauptmann  tries  to  give  emotion 
in  the  mass.  You  remember  in  L'Intruse  and 
Les  Aveugles,  how  everything  is  subordinated  to 
,the  production  of  the  one  thrill  —  that  of  fear. 


ICONOCLASTS 

By  dissimilar  method  Hauptmann  gets  a  similaf 
result.  He  meets  death  with  a  grave  sweetness. 
At  first  terrible  as  is  the  figure  of  the  great 
Dark  Angel,  with  his  dread  sword  all  bathed 
in  greenish  light,  the  Deaconess  brings  balm 
to  the  anxious,  questioning  soul  of  the  child,  and 
she  meets  death  with  dignity  and  submission. 
With  some  of  the  same  gentle  and  elevated 
philosophy  does  Hauptmann  approach  his 
theme.  The  beggar  child  and  her  sufferings 
and  dreams  serve  for  him  as  something  which 
he  drapes  about  with  wisdom  and  poetry. 

It  is  a  reversion  to  the  old  miracle  play  cun- 
ningly blended  with  modern  realism ;  it  is  this 
that  makes  its  form  seemingly  amorphous,  and 
renders  it  both  a  challenge  and  stumbling-block 
to  the  critics.  From  the  old  view-point  such 
a  play  as  this  is  not  fit  for  the  boards.  It  lacks 
action,  and  deals  with  states  of  emotion  rather 
than  with  dramatic  events.  But  a  soul  life  can 
also  be  dramatic,  and  Hauptmann,  who  knows 
Parsifal  well,  has  retained  an  admixture  of 
realism  so  as  to  set  off  by  violent  contrast  the 
exalted  idealism  of  the  later  scenes. 

Jules  Lemaitre,  the  French  critic,  in  praising 
Hannele,  spoke  of  the  persistency  in  us  of 
early  religious  impressions,  no  matter  how 
blurred  they  become  by  contact  with  the  world. 
Oddly  enough,  this  mixture  of  the  real  and  the 
supernatural  forestalled  Gorky  and  his  slum 
plays.  Gorky  himself  could  not  have  con- 
ceived and  executed  anything  more  poignant 
300 


GERHART    HAUPTMANN 

than  the  story  of  Hannele  — "  Petite  soeur  de 
la  grande  Brunnhild  endormie  aux  rochers 
deserts,"  as  Gabriel  Trarieux  calls  her.  A 
dream  poem,  a  study  in  mysticism,  Hannele 
evokes  memories  of  Maeterlinck,  though  it 
"  lacks  the  unity  of  his  atmosphere,"  as  an  Eng- 
lish critic  has  rightly  said.  But  it  is  moving 
art,  nevertheless. 

Hauptmann  wears  all  the  earmarks  of  a 
genius.  He  is  child  of  his  age  to  a  dangerous 
degree,  and  his  tremulous,  vibrating  sensibility 
mirrored  the  hysterical  agitation,  the  pessimism, 
the  sad  strivings,  the  individualism,  the  fret-fire 
fomentings  and  unbelief  of  a  dying  century. 
He  knows  Goethe,  and  after  the  last  act  of  The 
Sunken  Bell  one  feels  constrained  to  cry, 
"The  third  part  of  Faust!"  But  it  is  not 
Faust,  neither  is  it  Tannhauser,  though  there 
are  analogies ;  it  is  realism,  it  is  idealism,  it  is 
pantheism,  it  is  Wagnerism.  Above  all  Fried- 
rich  Nietzsche  towers  in  the  background,  and 
there  is  poesy,  exquisite  poesy. 

The  Sunken  Bell  is  a  compound  of  antag- 
onistic elements.  The  unities  seem  askew,  yet 
the  result  is  artistic  and  illusory.  Hauptmann 
has  a  clairvoyant  quality ;  he  imposes  upon  his 
audience  his  dream  of  his  own  fantastic  world, 
and  you  find  yourself  five  minutes  after  the 
rise  of  the  curtain  devoutly  believing  in  this 
queer  No-man's  land  of  mischievous  water 
goblins,  satyrs,  wonderful  white  nymphs,  and 
sorrowful  mortals.  It  is  all  a  masque  —  a  pro- 
20 1 


ICONOCLASTS 

found  masque  of  the  spirit  in  labour.  Viewed  as 
a  symbol,  we  see  in  Heinrich  the  bell-founder, 
the  type  of  the  struggling,  the  aspiring  artist, 
who,  cast  down  by  defeat,  is  led  to  more  remote 
and  loftier  heights  by  a  new  ideal,  there  to  live 
the  life  of  the  Uebermensch,  the  Super-man, 
of  Nietzsche.  The  fall  is  inevitable.  Dare  as 
dared  Faust  and  Ibsen's  Brand  to  desert  the 
valleys  and  scale  the  slopes  of  Parnassus,  and 
man's  fate  is  assured. 

Hauptmann's  hero  is  a  bell-founder  who, 
crazed  by  grief  at  the  loss  of  his  bell  in  the  lake, 
mounts  the  peak  and  lies  dying  at  the  door  of  a 
witch.  It  is  at  a  period  so  charmingly  pictured 
by  Heine.  The  twilight  of  the  gods  has  begun 
and  the  scared  peasant  caught  flashes  of  faun- 
like  creatures  flitting  in  woodland  glade  and 
grove,  still  saw  shining  the  breasts  of  the  nymph 
in  the  brake,  and  piously  crossed  himself  when 
toad,  snake,  and  worm  crossed  his  path.  Hein- 
rich is  found  by  Rautendelein,  an  elfish  being, 
an  exquisite  creation  of  fire,  of  flame,  something 
of  Ariel,  Miranda,  Puck,  naive  Gretchen,  a  new 
Undine,  a  symbol  of  the  freedom  of  nature,  a 
creature  touched  with  the  vaguer  surmise  of 
adolescence,  the  most  poetically  conceived  since 
Goethe's,  and  yet  evocative  of  Hans  Christian 
Andersen.  She,  like  the  mermaid  of  Ander- 
sen, loves  the  unconscious  mortal,  and  despite 
the  jaundiced  warnings  of  an  old  spirit  of  the 
well,  she  follows  the  sick  man  back  to  his  abode. 
The  first  act  is  ably  contrived.  There  is  atmos- 
202 


GERHART    HAUPTMANN 

phere,  and  the  well-nigh  impossible  parts  of  the 
faun  and  the  frog  man  —  the  latter  indulges  in 
the  familiar  Brek-ke-ke-keks  of  Aristophanes  — 
become  real  for  the  moment.  It  is  the  Haupt- 
mann  spell  that  weighs  upon  our  senses.  An- 
dersen-like, too,  is  the  discovery  by  this  child 
fairy  that  love  means  pain.  She  finds  a  tear  in 
her  eye  and  thinks  it  is  dew.  The  mystery  of 
womanhood  encompasses  her. 

In  Act  1 1  the  bellman  is  upon  a  bed  of  delirium. 
He  has  been  found  and  brought  down  from  the 
mountains  by  his  friends,  the  priest  and  the 
villagers.  His  wife  and  children  try  to  comfort 
him,  but  he  is  oblivious,  for  he  sees  in  his  ex- 
cited trance  the  figure  of  a  beautiful  girl.  Sud- 
denly the  dream  becomes  real.  Rautendelein 
sits  at  his  side  and  woos  him  back  to  health. 
Startling  is  the  end  of  this  scene.  The  nymph 
stands  against  the  wall,  her  eyes  fairly  blazing 
at  Heinrich,  while  his  wife  crouches  at  his  feet, 
happy  at  his  restoration  to  sanity.  She  does 
not  see  his  glance  fondly  fastened  on  the  nymph 
of  the  forest. 

He  then  leaves  his  home  and  goes  up  to  the 
heights,  where,  unhampered,  he  may  exercise  the 
full  play  of  his  artistic  faculties.  He  will  make 
a  bell  and  tune  it  to  the  laughter  of  Rautende- 
lein. It  shall  make  silvery  music  across  the 
hills  and  valleys,  and  summon  the  stray  souls  of 
earth  to  him.  He  exalts  nature  to  the  priest 
who  follows  him  to  reclaim  his  soul ;  this  third 
act  is  really  a  glorified  burst  of  Nietzscheism. 
203 


ICONOCLASTS 

Then  he  has  bad  dreams ;  he  is  haunted  by 
visions  of  home,  and,  after  all  the  splendour  of 
imagery,  of  his  defiance  of  the  conventionalities 
of  life,  something  mars  his  life  with  the  perfect 
woman  he  has  elected  to  follow. 

Appear  his  two  children  carrying  an  urn. 
"  What  carry  ye  ? "  he  demands.  "  Father,  we 
carry  an  urn."  —  "What  is  in  the  urn?" 
"Father,  something  bitter."  —  "  What  is  the 
something  bitter  ? "  "  Father,  our  mother's 
tears."  —  "Where  is  your  mother?"  "Where 
the  water-lilies  grow." 

Then  booms  down  in  the  valley,  where  lies 
the  lake,  the  sound  of  a  bell;  an  unearthly 
tone  it  has,  as  if  struck  by  no  mortal  hand ; 
it  is  touched  by  the  hand  of  his  dead  wife 
who  killed  herself  to  escape  her  misery.  Re- 
morse sets  in.  He  is  no  longer  Balder  the  god 
of  Spring,  but  a  wretched  man,  and,  driving 
away  with  revilings  the  poor  Rautendelein, 
he  descends  to  the  valley,  but  is  driven  away, 
and  finally  dies  in  front  of  the  witch's  hut ;  but 
not  before  Rautendelein  finds  him.  His  last 
words  are  an  ecstatic  appeal  to  the  sun  —  the 
sun  which  is  the  symbol  of  his  striving. 

The  charm,  the  witchery,  the  magical  bitter- 
sweetness  of  this  dramatic  poem  are  formidable 
at  the  close.  Heinrich  dies  of  poison,  self-ad- 
ministered, while  through  his  filmy  eyes  there 
presses  the  vision  of  the  beloved  one.  It  is, 
indeed,  Rautendelein,  but  her  very  shadow. 
Deserted,  dreary,  neither  maid  nor  mortal  nor 
204 


GERHART   HAUPTMANN 

nymph,  she  accepts  the  love  of  the  hideous, 
frog-like  Nickelman,  and  goes  down  to  his  slimy 
couch  in  the  well.  She  emerges  only  to  see 
her  lover  dying,  and  pathetically  denies  to  him 
that  she  is  Rautendelein.  As  the  curtain  falls 
on  his  corpse,  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  girl 
sadly  returning  to  the  well  and  to  her  horrible 
mate  in  the  mud. 

Sorma  gave  a  delicious,  naive,  and  plastic  ver- 
sion of  the  nymph  at  the  Irving  Place  Theatre 
in  1897.  She  possesses  an  exquisite  sensibility. 
She  painted  with  a  light  hand  the  caprice,  elfish 
cunning,  and  wiles  of  Rautendelein,  and  at  the 
close  the  tragic  note  was  delicately  sounded. 
It  was  a  great,  a  notable  achievement 

Sorma  has  been  called  the  German  Duse. 
She  is  really  a  Silesian  by  birth,  and  she  is  not  a 
Duse.  But  she  has  unusual  adroitness  in  the 
expression  of  the  conventional  dramatic  symbol- 
ism, and  an  agility  in  technic  and  a  variety  of 
vocal  and  facial  expression  that  enable  her  to 
assume  a  wide  range  of  character.  A  certain 
briskness  and  imperious  piquancy  make  her 
work  unlike  that  of  the  German  stage.  She  is 
more  Gallic,  in  reality  more  Slavic  than  Gallic. 
Her  person  is  finely  fashioned,  her  features 
good,  her  eyes  particularly  expressive,  and  her 
mask  mobile  and  expressive  easily  of  a  mob 
of  elusive  emotions.  She  reaches  her  climax 
by  a  rational  crescendo,  and  never  fails  to 
thrill.  Altogether  a  creature  of  real  fire  and 
with  an  air  of  distinction.  Of  the  occasional 
205 


ICONOCLASTS 

sentimentality  of  the  German  stage  she  is  never 
guilty. 

Mr.  Meltzer  in  the  preface  of  his  admirable 
translation  tells  us  "  to  view  the  play  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  reformer,  and  you  may  inter- 
pret it  as  the  tale  of  a  dreamer,  who,  hampered 
by  inevitable  conditions,  strives  to  remodel  human 
society.  For  my  part  I  incline  to  regard  Hein- 
rich  the  bell-founder  as  a  symbol  of  Humanity 
struggling  painfully  toward  the  realization  of  its 
dream  of  the  ideal  truth  and  joy  and  light  and 
justice.  Rautendelein  in  this  reading  stands  for 
Nature,  or  rather  for  the  freedom  and  sincerity 
of  Nature,  missing  a  reunion  with  which  Hu- 
manity can  never  hope  to  reach  the  supreme 
truth,  and  the  supreme  bliss  of  which  the  Sun  is 
the  emblem." 

The  artist  sans  moral  obligations  is  bound  to 
be  a  failure,  no  matter  the  height  or  depth  of 
his  genius.  This  has  Tennyson  sung;  and 
Goethe,  in  his  imperial  manner,  has  set  it  forth. 
Symbolic  and  allegoric  The  Sunken  Bell  may 
signify  the  conflict  of  Pagan  and  Christian,  Jew 
and  Greek,  Heinrich  standing  midway  between 
the  opposing  forces  as  did  Walter  Pater's  Denys 
in  the  mad  days  at  Auxerrois.  Miraculously 
has  the  poet  fixed  his  wild  people  of  wood  and 
waves.  They  with  their  coarse,  elemental  ges- 
tures and  foolery  might  have  stepped  out  of  a 
canvas  by  Arnold  Bocklin.  The  blank  verse  is 
admirable,  and  while  the  Faust  metre  is  largely 
used  there  are  no  such  lyrics  as  we  find  strewn 
206 


GERHART   HAUPTMANN 

through  Goethe's  immortal  pages.  And  yet  — 
yet  is  not  Hauptmann  Germany's  most  distin- 
guished dramatist  since  that  master  ?  The 
admirers  of  Robert  Hamerling  and  Von  Wilden- 
bruch  will  not  have  it  so  —  possibly  because  of 
the  pessimism  and  the  socialistic  views  of  the 
new  man.  Nevertheless,  Hauptmann  has  the 
ear  of  all  Germany  to-day. 

In  Rose  Bernd,  Hauptmann  returns  to  his 
beloved  Silesians  of  The  Weavers,  of  Fuhrmann 
Henschel,  of  Before  Sunrise.  His  new  five-act 
piece  is  a  drama  of  the  open  fields  and  rough 
peasant  life.  It  is  atmospheric  throughout.  Its 
moral  fibre  is  incontestably  strong,  though  the 
method  of  presentation  may  seem  unpleasant. 
The  dialect  is  difficult  for  the  student,  the  play 
itself  squalid  and  painful  to  a  degree.  Nor  has 
it  the  inevitable  quality  of  Die  Weber  or  Wag- 
oner Henschel.  Rose  recalls,  though  vaguely, 
something  of  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles,  of  Hetty 
Sorrel,  and  of  Gretchen.  She  is  a  worker  in  the 
harvest  fields,  and  previous  to  the  action  of  the 
play  has  been  deceived  by  Christoph  Flamm, 
the  mayor  of  the  district  and  a  jolly  landowner 
who  has  a  paralyzed  wife.  He  is  a  vital  figure ; 
his  exuberance,  unrepentance,  selfishness,  and 
genuine  passion  for  Rose  are  all  minutely  indi- 
cated. His  wife  has  been  a  second  mother  to 
Rose,  who  resides  with  her  father,  a  poor  old 
peasant,  a  strict  pietist.  Frau  Flamm  has  lost 
her  only  child  and  lives  on  her  memories.  She 
is  wheeled  about  her  house  in  an  invalid's  chair, 
207 


ICONOCLASTS 

She,  too,  is  alive,  and  her  not  unkindly  probing 
of  the  unfortunate  girl's  secret  brings  about  some 
stirring  scenes. 

Rose  is  engaged  to  a  young  man,  a  book- 
binder, who  is  pious,  whose  dream  was  to  be- 
come a  missionary.  He  is  unassuming,  ugly, 
and  adores  Rose.  She  might  have  surmounted 
her  troubles  if  the  disturbing  element  in  the 
person  of  Streckmann,  the  dissipated  engineer  of 
the  village  threshing  machine,  had  not  crossed 
her  fate.  He  has  witnessed  the  interviews  of 
Rose  and  Flamm,  and  he  scares  her  by  threaten- 
ing to  tell  the  story  to  her  father  and  her  be- 
trothed.  He  attempts  to  capture  her  for  himself, 
and  at  last  succeeds,  as  the  wretched  girl  relates 
in  accusing  him  :  "  I  came  to  you  in  terror  and 
anguish.  I  got  on  my  knees  before  you.  You 
swore  that  you  would  keep  my  secret.  You  fell 
upon  me  like  a  bird  of  prey.  I  tried  to  escape 
.  .  .  you  committed  a  crime." 

Streckmann  later,  in  drunken  fury,  tells  the 
peasants  of  Rose's  sins.  Her  father  believes  in 
her,  but  insists  upon  an  explanation.  The  mis- 
erable creature  confesses  in  a  delirious  accent 
that  she  has  just  strangled  her  new-born  babe. 
Her  father  has  her  arrested,  and  her  patient 
lover  August,  who  has  forgiven  her,  lifts  the 
swooning  girl  and  exclaims,  "  Hat  das  madel 
gelitten ! "  (What  the  girl  must  have  suffered !) 
The  play  was  forbidden  the  boards  in  Austria  by 
the  Emperor  —  it  was  at  once  too  moral  and  too 
truthful. 

208 


GERHART    HAUFTMANN 

The  interpretation  at  the  Lessing  Theatre, 
Berlin,  which  I  witnessed,  October  2,  1904, 
was  one  the  memory  of  which  I  shall  long 
treasure.  The  distribution  of  the  roles  was  al- 
most faultless  ;  the  individual  execution  of  a  high 
order.  Rose  was  enacted  by  that  great  artist, 
Else  Lehmann,  who  portrayed  the  trying  soul 
states  and  mental  agony  of  the  unfortunate 
peasant  girl  with  supreme  skill.  All  the  more 
difficult  is  the  character  because  Hauptmann  has 
resolutely  avoided  showing  us  what  Rose  really 
thinks.  She  is  reacted  upon  by  her  friends  and 
enemies,  yet  seldom  speaks,  except  in  mono- 
syllables. The  illumination  of  her  nature  was 
a  peculiar  triumph  of  Lehmann's  simple,  sin- 
cere art. 

Next  to  her  artistically  stood  Hedwig  Pauly 
as  the  invalid  wife  who  knows  the  manner  of 
man  to  whom  she  is  united  and  divines  through 
feminine  intuition  and  sympathy  the  sufferings 
of  Rose.  The  scene  wherein  the  girl  is  inter- 
rogated was  tear-compelling.  Nor  must  the 
open-air  incidents  be  forgotten.  Herr  Brahm's 
company  played  throughout  with  that  fidelity 
to  life,  with  that  utter  absence  of  "  acting,"  which 
are  the  very  essence  of  the  histrionic  art. 

Rose  Bernd,  one  is  tempted  to  add,  is  Haupt- 
mann's  masterpiece,  if  we  did  not  remember 
Die  Weber.  It  is  deeply  human,  and  in  its 
exposition  of  character  a  masterpiece. 

It  seems  Hauptmann's  fate  to  be  hopelessly 
misinterpreted  —  he,  the  poet  whose  love  for  his 
209 


ICONOCLASTS 

fellow-beings  is  become  a  veritable  passion.  He 
began  his  artistic  life  as  a  poet-sculptor,  and  he 
has  been  modelling  human  souls  ever  since. 
Perhaps  they  may  be  as  imperishable  as  if 
they  had  been  carved  in  marble. 


2IO 


PAUL    HERVIEU 

WHEN  Ferdinand  Brunetiere  praises  a  drama, 
novel,  or  poem,  it  may  be  inferred  that  the  ethical 
element  predominates.  It  is,  therefore,  some- 
thing of  a  surprise  to  find  him  enthusiastic  over 
Paul  Hervieu's  latest  play,  Le  D6dale,  which 
met  with  such  a  friendly  reception  at  the  Theatre 
Francois,  December  19,  1903,  the  night  of  its 
production.  It  is  a  work  of  power,  of  art, 
while  its  moral  is  not  flaunted  as  on  a  signboard. 
The  implacably  harsh  and  logical  treatment  of 
the  woman  with  two  husbands  doubtless  extorted 
from  M.  Brunetiere  the  honour  of  a  patient  and 
lengthy  review.  Himself  a  Roman  Catholic  of 
the  reactionary  —  one  is  tempted  to  employ  the 
old-fashioned  word  "  ultramontane  "  —  type,  the 
French  critic  could  not  fail  to  side  with  the  play- 
wright, though  he  has  not  hesitated,  after  the 
manner  of  critics,  to  read  into  this  problem 
piece  some  meanings  of  his  own. 

With  the  advent  of  the  Naquet  divorce  bill 
in  France  the  countenance  of  problem  plays 
underwent  a  radical  change.  A  ministerial 
stroke  of  the  pen  invalidated  Dumas  fils  and  his 
unhappy  women  as  a  theme  for  dramatic  treat- 
211 


ICONOCLASTS 

ment.  We  have  had  plays  dealing  with  the  un- 
pleasant subject  since  then,  but  these  were  either 
frankly  frivolous  like  those  of  Alfred  Capus,  or 
wittily  cynical  with  those  of  Maurice  Donnay. 
The  modern  master  builder  of  French  drama, 
Henry  Becque,  wrote  L'Enlevement,  in  which 
he  presented  the  question  with  his  accustomed 
clearness  and  probity.  Hervieu,  in  Le  D6dale, 
shows  the  influence  of  at  least  one  scene  of 
Becque,  though  he  has  handled  the  incident 
so  individually  as  to  deflect  its  conclusions  com- 
pletely. Since  L'Enlevement  there  has  been 
no  such  literary  performance  as  Le  Dedale, 
which  proved  a  labyrinth  indeed  for  its  un- 
happy  characters  and  a  masterpiece  in  form. 

The  story  is  a  simple  one,  direct  as  antique 
tragedy,  and  far  from  being  improbable.  Di- 
vorce in  France  is  a  much  more  complicated 
matter  than  in  America.  Society,  notwithstand- 
ing its  cynical  attitude,  is  not  too  favourable  to 
divorced  men  and  women,  particularly  women. 
The  church  refuses  to  sanction  separation  if  it  is 
to  be  followed  by  remarriage.  Whether  forged 
in  heaven  or  elsewhere,  the  fetters  of  wedlock 
are  never  to  be  loosed  unless  by  death.  Now 
Hervieu  does  not  pretend  to  a  sympathy  with 
either  society  or  the  church.  He  does  not  at- 
tempt to  win  our  suffrages  for  the  woman  or  for 
the  man.  His  is  too  judicial  an  intellect  to  show 
partisanship,  and  he  is  too  superior  an  artist  to 
turn  his  play  into  a  moral  tract.  He  dives  deeper 
than  the  law  or  society ;  he  dives  straight  into 

212 


PAUL   HERVIEU 

the  human  heart,  and  after  setting  forth  his 
situations  his  summing  up  is  irrefragable.  From 
the  clash  of  his  warring  souls  comes  his  tragedy  ; 
the  divorce  is  a  mere  pretext  to  set  his  people  in 
action.  The  law  of  the  species,  that  compelling 
and  terrible  law,  is  his  weapon,  a  formidable  one 
in  his  skilled  hands.  His  thesis,  baldly  stated,  is 
this :  A  man  and  a  woman  once  married  are 
married  until  death,  if  there  be  a  child.  Let 
the  law  supervene,  let  vagrant  passion  demolish 
the  social  structure,  this  stark,  naked  fact  re- 
mains—  the  flesh  of  the  child  unites  the  parents 
in  the  bond  of  eternity. 

In  an  earlier  play,  Les  Tenailles,  the  same 
idea  was  present,  but  is  a  first  attempt  compared 
to  this  newer  work.  The  story  in  Le  D6dale 
runs  thus  :  Marianne  de  Pogis  has  separated 
from  her  husband  Max,  a  handsome,  careless 
viveur,  for  very  patent  reasons ;  with  her  own 
eyes  she  witnessed  his  infidelity,  further  accen- 
tuated by  the  fact  that  her  friend  was  an  accom- 
plice to  his  infidelity.  The  outraged  woman 
takes  her  son  and  seeks  the  protection  of  her 
parents.  These  are  called  the  Villard-Duvals, 
the  father  of  the  old  school,  tolerant  of  mascu- 
line transgressions ;  the  mother  a  strict  Roman 
Catholic,  who  abhors  divorce.  M.  Hervieu  has 
never  been  so  happy  in  his  painting  of  two  such 
widely  dissimilar  portraits.  Marianne  is  a  proud 
woman  with  her  father's  will  and  temperament, 
proud  and,  unfortunately  for  her  peace  of  mind, 
passionate.  The  inevitable  man  turns  up.  He 
213 


ICONOCLASTS 

is  an  admirable  character,  this  Le  Breuil  —  a 
gentleman,  steadfast,  honourable  above  all, 
patient.  He  loves  Marianne  and  will  not  be 
refused.  And  she,  tired  of  her  claustral  ex- 
istence, tired  of  her  mother's  reproaches,  at  last 
listens  to  the  pleadings  of  her  suitor.  Why  not  ? 
She  argues  that  her  life  has  been  made  miserable 
through  no  fault  of  her  own.  Why  not  re- 
marry and  snatch  some  happiness  from  the 
devourer  of  all  happiness  —  Time  ?  Her 
mother  refuses  to  hear  of  the  project.  Worse 
to  her  would  be  the  remarriage  of  her  daughter 
than  sheer  adultery.  She  has  accused  Marianne 
of  an  unforgiving  disposition,  and  it  is  only  too 
plain  that  she  still  considers  her  married  to  her 
divorced  husband.  But  the  father  likes  his  pre- 
sumptive son-in-law.  The  man's  honesty  and 
fearlessness  appeal  to  him.  Marianne,  worn 
out  by  the  continual  bickering,  marries  Guil- 
laume  Le  Breuil. 

In  the  next  act  we  find  them  happy.  The 
little  son  is  loved  by  his  stepfather  as  if  he  were 
his  own.  But  a  cloud  mounts  in  their  sky. 
The  former  husband,  Max  de  Pogis,  comes  with 
his  mother  to  intercede  for  a  sight  of  his  boy. 
He  is  melancholy  and  depressingly  repentant. 
He  married  the  woman  for  whom  he  sold  his 
matrimonial  birthright,  and  is  now  a  widower. 
In  a  vividly  conceived  and  expressed  scene  his 
mother,  a  skilful,  worldly  dame,  argues  with 
Marianne  that  to  the  father  the  love  of  the  son 
belongs.  At  last,  after  an  exhausting  interview 
214 


PAUL   HERVIEU 

in  which  the  hearts  of  these  three  humans  are 
shown  as  if  in  a  blazing  light,  Marianne  consents 
to  her  son  visiting  the  chateau  of  his  father  and 
his  grandmother. 

And  then  begins  the  mischief.  The  boy  is 
smitten  by  a  dangerous  illness.  The  third  act 
discovers  Marianne  almost  crazed  by  grief  at 
the  home  of  her  former  husband.  She  has 
nursed  the  child  in  company  with  his  father. 
She  only  leaves  the  bedside  when  the  doctor 
pronounces  his  patient  out  of  danger.  The 
woman  collapses.  Max  finds  her  weak,  her 
nerves  shattered  by  the  strain.  He  has  touched 
her  hand  across  the  body  of  their  dying  child, 
but  not  her  heart.  He  makes  an  impassioned 
appeal,  but  is  repulsed.  She  loves  her  new 
husband,  she  says,  and  has  written  him  at  least 
once  every  day.  The  mother  of  Max  also  tells 
the  harassed  woman  of  the  love  she  has  aroused 
in  her  son  —  a  love  purified  by  deep  sorrow. 
At  last  Marianne  retires  to  the  apartment  in 
which  she  slept  the  night  when  Max  de  Pogis 
brought  her  to  his  chateau.  Max  enters.  It  is 
a  scene  that  even  when  read  touches  the  heart. 
The  man  is  in  earnest.  He  is  humble.  He  tells 
of  his  love  —  a  love  compared  to  which  the 
second  husband's  is  nothing.  He  plays  the  old 
variations  with  a  woman's  heart  —  a  maternal 
heart  —  as  the  instrument.  This  music  proves 
dangerous.  It  sets  reverberating  familiar  chords. 
The  hour  is  midnight.  The  father  of  her  son 
looks  into  her  eyes  and  points  to  the  mementos 
215 


ICONOCLASTS 

of  their  early  love.  He  clasps  her  to  his  breast, 
and  the  curtain  falls  on  the  subjugation  of  the 
woman.  The  ghost  of  the  past  has  made  her 
forget  the  present. 

Do  not  be  in  haste  to  condemn  her  weakness. 
The  dramatist  is  pitiless  enough  in  his  judgment. 
She  goes  to  her  parents',  not  her  husband's 
home,  and  half  mad  with  remorse  tells  —  with- 
out any  attempt  to  sentimentally  varnish  her  guilt 
—  her  mother  everything.  That  lady  is  not 
surprised,  shocked  as  she  may  be.  Max,  after 
all,  is  the  husband  of  Marianne  in  the  sight  of 
God,  let  legislators  decree  what  they  may.  It 
is  the  triumph  of  the  mother,  the  triumph  of  the 
species  Jules  Gaultier  would  call  it.  The  father 
is  told,  and  he  grieves  mightily.  And  Le  Breuil, 
the  new  husband,  what  of  him!  Shuddering, 
Marianne  declares  that  henceforth  for  her  he 
no  longer  exists.  She  has  descended  lower 
than  the  lowest,  but  there  remains  a  still  deeper 
gulf  of  vileness,  and  into  it  she  will  not  fall.  Le 
Breuil  clamours  for  admittance.  He  must  know 
why  his  wife  has  not  gone  to  her  house.  She 
will  not  see  him.  He,  the  gentle  Guillaume, 
becomes  quarrelsome.  Then  she  resolves  to 
meet  him.  This  interview  is  another  master- 
piece of  observation  and  dramatic  values.  He 
begs  for  an  explanation  —  he  suspects  that  her 
nerves  have  been  upset  by  her  visit  and  by  the 
illness  of  her  son,  though  he  is  too  tender  and 
chivalric  to  cast  this  in  her  teeth.  He  is  an- 
gelic in  his  behaviour,  but  to  no  avail.  Some 
216 


PAUL   HERVIEU 

subtle  chemistry  has  transformed  the  nature  of 
Marianne.  She  respects,  she  pities  her  husband 
—  live  with  him  she  cannot.  Aroused  by  her 
obduracy,  Guillaume  rushes  at  her  to  kiss  her. 
In  a  blinding  flash  she  sees  herself  further  dis- 
honoured —  and  to  avoid  the  shame  and  desola- 
tion of  it  all  she  confesses.  It  is  an  awful 
revelation.  The  unhappy  man  cannot  believe 
his  ears.  He  is  brutal,  hysterical,  wretched, 
and  finally  in  a  fury  throws  the  woman  from 
him  and  rushes  out  to  kill  the  wrecker  of  his 
happiness. 

Fifth  acts  are  always  dangerous.  Ibsen's 
fifth  acts  are,  as  a  rule,  his  weakest.  The  play- 
wright who  has  the  genius  of  the  first  act  has 
seldom  the  genius  of  the  fifth.  M.  Hervieu's 
first  acts  invariably  puzzle  or  offend.  No  writer 
has  to  create  a  new  public  with  each  new  play 
as  has  this  one.  The  reason  is  because  his 
themes  and  their  bold,  unconventional  manipu- 
lation set  on  edge  the  nerves  of  his  audience. 

In  his  drama,  Hervieu  is  the  great  serious 
artist.  He  never  trifles,  despite  his  gift  of  irony, 
with  his  characters  ;  never  mocks  them  —  above 
all,  never  lets  them  escape  his  iron  grasp. 
There  is  nothing  of  the  improvisatore  in  him  ;  he 
has  not  the  romantic  passion  of  George  Sand  nor 
Ibsen's  spirit  of  revolt ;  nor  is  he  a  vindicator  of 
social  wrongs  like  M.  Brieux.  He  is  a  dramatist, 
perhaps,  fathered  by  the  unique  Henry  Becque, 
with  a  vision  not  unlike  Stendhal's.  The  in- 
tensity of  this  vision,  the  sincerity  of  the  man, 
217 


ICONOCLASTS 

and  the  utter  absence  in  him  of  the  the- 
atrical wonder-worker  have  endeared  him  to 
M.  Brunetiere. 

Every  big  play  has  at  least  one  act  that 
evokes  violent  discussion.  Le  Dedale  is  no 
exception.  Its  fifth  act  is  a  strain  upon  our 
credulity,  though  sober  second  thought  compels 
one  to  accept  the  denouement,  violent  as  it  is. 
A  duel  is  inevitable  between  the  two  men;  the 
death  of  either  one  would  be  banal ;  Marianne 
cannot  without  violating  the  proprieties  be 
thrust  into  the  arms  of  either  man ;  besides,  the 
woman,  horrified  by  her  error,  an  error  seem- 
ingly thrust  upon  her  by  malignant  fate,  has  now 
conceived  an  aversion  to  both  Max  and  Guil- 
laume.  Max  persecutes  her,  follows  her  to  her 
country  home,  while  Guillaume  silently  tracks 
him.  She  meets  the  latter  in  an  arbour  and 
refuses  to  live  with  him  again.  The  injured 
man  encounters  Max  as  that  seducer  gayly  pro- 
ceeds through  the  garden.  Their  meeting  is 
a  stirring  moment.  After  a  few  bitter  words 
Guillaume  drags  Max  over  a  cliff  into  a  raging 
stream,  where  their  bodies  are  swept  irrecovera- 
bly away.  Unconscious  of  this  double  tragedy, 
Marianne  is  heard  calling  :  "  Louis,  Louis !  " 
and  as  the  little  boy  runs  in  the  curtain  falls  on 
a  mute,  touching"  display  of  maternal  love. 

The  reading  of  the  play  gives  the  impression 

of  a  melodramatic  touch  in  this  catastrophe.      It 

seems  at  first  as  if  the  author  in  despair  had 

solved  his  problem  by  a  hasty  theatrical  stroke 

218 


PAUL   HERVIEU 

As  performed  by  the  inimitable  Bartet  and 
Le  Bargy  and  Paul  Mounet  there  is  only  a  faint 
suggestion  of  the  theatric.  Like  the  divorce 
theme,  the  tragedy  at  the  close  is  but  an 
aid  to  expand  M.  Hervieu's  thesis.  Not  the 
inviolability  of  ecclesiastical  marriage,  not  the 
dispute  of  two  men  for  the  possession  of  a 
woman,  but  his  thesis  is  the  exposition  of  the 
truth  that  a  man  and  a  woman  are  forever 
linked  by  that  bond  of  flesh,  their  child.  Other- 
wise the  dramatist  holds  no  brief  for  heredity  or 
one  against  divorce.  He  selected  his  material 
like  an  artist.  What  would  have  been  the  re- 
sult if  Marianne  had  had  a  child  by  her  second 
husband  ?  Probably  we  should  have  had  no 
play.  We  must  accept  the  premises  of  Hervieu 
or  else  avoid  challenging  his  conclusions.  In 
the  remotest  analysis  a  drama  may  be  an  entity 
for  the  crucible  of  the  metaphysician ;  yet  if  it 
be  great  it  will  defy  the  test  of  logic  as  does  life 
itself.  And  there  is  not  only  logic  in  Paul 
Hervieu's  Le  Dedale,  but  life,  a  great  section  of 
throbbing,  real  life.  It  is  certainly  the  most 
significant  French  play  thus  far  of  the  new 
century. 

I  tested  the  validity  of  the  foregoing  criticism 
written  after  reading  the  play  by  attending  a 
performance  at  the  Fran^ais,  Paris,  October  20, 
1904.  Madame  Bartet  was  superb,  far  exceed- 
ing my  rather  suspicious  expectations.  Her 
serenity  and  dignity  in  the  earlier  acts ;  the 
219 


ICONOCLASTS 

maternal  anguish,  the  maternal —  literally  —  pas. 
sion  that  caused  her  defection  ;  the  remorse  and 
almost  hysterical  confession,  were  all  indicated 
by  this  mistress  of  fine  nuances.  Le  Bargy  has 
seldom  been  better  cast,  while  Paul  Mounet  was 
excellent ;  and  I  was  almost  convinced  by  the 
finale,  though  I  wish  the  playwright,  taking  a 
hint  from  Ibsen,  had  ended  on  an  unresolved 
cadence.  But  M.  Hervieu  is  too  logical,  too 
Gallic,  to  treat  his  audiences  thus.  He  even 
re-wrote  The  Enigma  so  as  to  make  the  end 
clearer. 

The  Enigma,  which  London  saw  in  March, 
1902,  at  Wyndham's  Theatre,  was  then  called 
Caesar's  Wife,  which  is,  as  Osman  Edwards 
justly  remarks,  a  pompous  title. 

The  English  cast  of  L'Enigme  was :  Mrs. 
Tree  as  Le"onore,  Fay  Davis  as  Giselle,  Fred 
Kerr  as  Marquis  de  Neste,  Leonard  Boyne  as 
Vivarce.  The  story  is  simple,  the  treatment 
rather  classic :  Act  I  is  lengthy,  barren  of  in- 
cident, and  bitter  in  its  polemical  tone;  Act  II 
is  old-fashioned  in  its  development  and  climax, 
yet  the  last  words  spoken  are  distinctly  novel 
and  a  tremendous  indictment  of  the  man  who 
slays  the  woman  on  the  plea  of  outraged  honour. 
Here  is  Dumas's  Tu^-la  reversed  with  a  ven- 
geance. Yet  one  platitude  supplants  another.  If 
the  brute  who  kills  his  wife  because  she  is  un- 
faithful to  him  is  to  be  succeeded  by  the  lady 
who  deceives  her  husband  because  he  is  un- 
pleasant to  her,  where  does  the  moral  come 

220 


PAUL    HERVIEU 

in  ?  It  is  a  new  convention  driving  out  an 
old.  As  Hervieu  is  feministe,  his  sympathy 
leads  him  to  espouse  the  cause  of  the  woman. 
Without  wishing  to  be  ungallant,  we  may  ask 
what  is  the  difference  between  the  woman  with 
a  half-dozen  lovers  and  the  man  with  a  half- 
dozen  mistresses  ?  In  the  eyes  of  the  law,  in 
the  eyes  of  religion,  none ;  in  the  eyes  of  so- 
ciety a  vast  deal  —  if  the  woman  is  discovered. 
Not  if  the  man  is ;  but  before  a  jury-box  com- 
posed of  twelve  intelligent  men  the  woman  who 

—  as  popular  parlance  has  it —  "  sins  "  has  every 
chance  of  being  pitied  and  pardoned.     Here  the 
elemental  sympathy  of  the  male  for  the  female 
counts   heavily  against   testimony  and   judge's 
charge. 

Dumas  knew  this  (if  he  had  lived  in  America 
the  fact  would  have  been  driven  home  every 
morning  in  the  newspapers)  when  he  wrote 
Francillon,  especially  when  he  wrote  Femme  de 
Claude.  Tu^-la!  was  his  ferocious  advice.  So 
M.  Hervieu  set  himself  to  preach  the  contrary. 
In  Les  Paroles  Restent,  his  first  dramatic  essay, 
even  in  Les  Tenailles,  and  La  Loi  de  1'Homme, 
the  wordiness  becomes  most  monotonous.  In 
The  Enigma,  we  notice  the  same  long-winded 
discussions  &  la  Dumas  as  in  Princesse  Georges, 
with  the  raissonneur  in  the  centre  of  the  stage, 

—  in  this  case   Marquis  de  Neste,  —  weighing 
the   merits  of   the   various    speeches,    spouting 
many  himself,   altogether    turning   the    exposi- 
tory  act    into    a    debating    society.      In    their 

221 


ICONOCLASTS 

revolt  against  the  so-called  "  well-made  play," 
the  newer  Parisian  dramatists  have  gone  to  the 
other  extreme. 

However,  the  plot  of  The  Enigma  is  distinctly 
worth  the  telling.  Two  brothers,  noblemen,  De 
Gourgiran  by  name,  are  married  to  two  charming 
women,  Leonore  and  Giselle.  Here  is  a  quartet 
instead  of  the  eternal  duo  with  the  triangle  hung 
over  the  door  like  a  sinister  horseshoe  presaging 
ill  luck.  To  this  double  family  are  added  the 
elderly  Marquis,  who  is  a  cousin  to  the  brothers, 
and  a  young  man,  Vivarce  by  name.  He  is  the 
unknown  quantity  of  this  well-mixed  combina- 
tion. At  first  the  household  seems  like  most 
happy  ones  —  without  anything  worthy  of  chroni- 
cling. The  brothers  are  mighty  Nimrods,  the 
wives  have  children  to  interest  them,  Vivarce 
to  amuse  them,  the  Marquis  to  lecture  them. 
Everything  goes  on  ,oiled  wheels  until  the  game- 
keeper of  the  estate  tells  his  masters  that  poach- 
ers are  abroad.  The  fraternal  pair  resolve  on 
stealing  out  before  daybreak  and  surprising  the 
rascals.  The  respective  characters  of  the  broth- 
ers do  not  show  much  diversity  ;  both  live  to  hunt, 
and  incidentally  they  love  their  wives  better,  much 
better,  than  their  dogs.  About  this  there  must 
be  no  mistake.  Honest,  upright,  inflexible,  hard- 
hearted, hard-headed  persons,  they  are  absolutely 
lacking  in  humour.  They  bore  their  wives,  and 
if  you  would  tell  them  this,  they  would  shrug 
shoulders  philosophically  and  remark  that  women, 
especially  good  wives,  were  intended  to  be  bored 
by  husbands.  222 


PAUL   HERVIEU 

But  note  their  scowling  features  if  that  draw- 
ing-room animal,  the  professional  lover,  is  men- 
tioned! Both  empty  their  choicest  vials  of 
objurgation  and  fury  upon  the  luckless  beast's 
head.  In  fact,  a  discussion  is  started  about  the 
treatment  a  man  should  accord  an  erring  wife. 
The  one  rather  would  shoot  such  a  wife  through 
the  heart,  the  other  brother  would  slay  the  lover 
and  keep  the  wife  alive  and  near  at  hand  so  that 
she  might  be  tortured.  This  cold-blooded  propo- 
sition arouses  the  righteous  indignation  of  Giselle, 
who  protests  in  the  name  of  her  sex,  in  the  name 
of  humanity.  She  becomes  so  agitated  that  the 
Marquis,  whose  suspicions  have  been  aroused 
for  some  time,  suspects  the  lady  of  carrying  on 
an  intrigue  with  Vivarce.  Earlier  in  the  scene 
he  has  privately  accused  Vivarce  of  betraying 
one  of  his  hosts'  wives,  but  which  one  he  cannot 
say. 

Now  here  is  where  the  puzzle  comes  in  and 
the  psychology  evaporates.  The  Marquis,  so  he 
relates,  while  suffering  from  insomnia,  gets  up 
one  fine  night  and  sees  Vivarce  vanishing  in  the 
door  of  the  chateau,  which  door  was  opened  by 
a  female  hand.  Whose  ?  Evidently  one  of  the 
married  women.  Which  one  ?  Ah,  that  is  the 
enigma !  Vivarce  feebly  admits  his  shameful 
behaviour,  though  he  refuses  to  give  the  name 
of  the  fair  sinner.  The  old  nobleman  is  per- 
plexed. He  advises  flight.  He  talks  like  an 
ancient  uncle  from  the  country,  who  does  not 
wish  to  borrow  money  from  his  city  relatives 
223 


ICONOCLASTS 

—  that  is,  he  talks  sense,  and  as  it  dribbles  in 
one  ear  and  out  the  other  of  his  moonstruck 
companion,  he  realizes  the  futility  of  his  well- 
meant  sermon.  Young  men  will  be  fools  and 
lunatics  —  and  he  might  have  added,  when  they 
are  not,  heaven  help  their  wives  in  later  years ! 

Unknown  to  the  others  the  brothers  resolve 
on  lying  in  wait  for  the  poachers.  After  some 
conjugal  bantering  they  retire.  Their  wives  sit 
up  to  talk  matters  over.  The  door  has  been 
barred;  it  is  very  close  within;  Giselle  pro- 
poses that  they  open  the  house.  She  essays 
in  vain  to  lift  the  heavy  oaken  bar.  Leonore 
tries.  She  succeeds.  The  moonlight  is  mellow 
without,  and  the  summer  night  sends  pleasant  air 
and  odours  into  the  living  room.  At  last  the  two 
women  prepare  for  bed.  Novels  are  selected, 
and  with  lamps  in  hand  they  are  leaving  the 
room  without  thought  of  the  open  door.  Giselle 
remembers  it  and  returns.  Leonore  bids  her  not 
to  bother  —  there  are  no  thieves  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood. The  curtain  falls. 

Up  to  this  moment  there  is  no  way  of  rec- 
ognizing the  "  guilty  "  woman.  Dishonours  are 
about  even.  Giselle,  to  be  sure,  is  passionate  in 
her  protestations  of  contempt  for  the  brutality 
of  husbands  who  take  the  law  into  their  own 
hands.  But  Leonore  unbars  the  door.  Giselle 
recalls  the  fact  that  it  should  not  be  open,  and 
Leonore  tells  her  not  to  worry.  Which  one  is 
k  ?  And  before  you  rush  rashly  to  a  conclusion 
remember  that  the  dramatist  knows  more  than  his 
224 


PAUL    HERVIEU 

audience,  and  that  he  contrives  pitfalls  for  the 
unwary.  Both  women  seem  guilty,  both  may  be 
innocent.  One  of  the  brothers  comes  softly  into 
the  room ;  both  have  agreed  not  to  worry  their 
wives  about  the  poachers.  The  door  is  found 
unbolted.  The  first  comer  surmises  that  his 
brother  has  preceded  him,  but  the  gamekeeper 
tells  him  the  door  was  open.  Then  the  other 
brother  enters.  Surprise  !  But  there  is  no  time 
for  this  sentiment,  as  a  man  steals  through  the 
dimly  lighted  room.  After  a  brief,  fierce  strug- 
gle he  is  pinioned.  A  lantern  reveals  the  fea- 
tures of  Vivarce.  How  did  he  come  there  ?  Why 
did  he  come  out  of  the  women's  apartments  at 
this  hour  in  the  morning  ?  Hate  and  destruction 
are  in  the  air. 

His  answers  are  evasive.  He  is  nervous  — 
wanted  a  cigarette.  The  lie  is  cast  back  in  his 
teeth.  And  then  a  woman,  holding  a  candle, 
rushes  in  with  pale  face.  It  is  Leonore.  She 
has  been  awakened,  so  she  avers,  by  the  shock 
of  voices.  Her  husband  sternly  inquires  her 
whereabouts  a  few  moments  before.  She  has 
an  excuse  ready.  She  swears  she  is  not  guilty, 
and  even  kneels  to  Vivarce,  beseeching  him  to 
clear  her.  It  is  too  much.  Her  husband  plucks 
her  by  the  arm,  and  then,  as  his  brother  ques- 
tions her  too  closely,  the  man  wavers  to  the  side 
of  his  wife.  Perhaps,  after  all,  it  was  Giselle. 
Yes,  where  is  Giselle  ?  The  husband  of  the  ab- 
sent one  is  swift  to  defend  her.  He  goes  to 
her  room  and  finds  her  fast  asleep.  Aha !  says 
225 


ICONOCLASTS 

the  other  woman,  and  awakens  her.  Confused 
by  the  lights,  the  accusation,  the  clash  of  words, 
she  is  the  very  picture  of  a  guilty  woman  as  she 
enters  in  her  white  night  robe,  her  hair  unbound, 
her  features  suffused  in  tears.  Besides,  did  she 
not  make  some  very  audacious  speeches  earlier 
in  the  evening  defending  the  right  to  love  of  a 
woman  weaned  of  her  husband  ?  Free  love  — 
ah,  odious  phrase !  It  damns  her  at  once. 

The  trouble  with  a  situation  of  this  kind  is 
that  the  spectator,  carried  away  by  his  curiosity, 
forgets  all  about  the  play  of  character,  the  prob- 
lem involved.  It  is  The  Lady  or  the  Tiger  over 
again,  and  not  so  cleverly  handled  as  that  little 
masterpiece,  for,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  Her- 
vieu  solves  the  riddle  in  a  very  prosaic  fashion. 
A  big  interrogation  point  at  the  end  would  be 
the  only  excuse  for  a  recrudescence  of  a  play  of 
the  Dumas  sort.  When  Richard  Strauss  com- 
posed the  enigmatic  tonalities  at  the  close  of  his 
Tone  poem,  Also  Sprach  Zarathustra,  he  did 
so  because  he  could  not  logically  leave  us  on 
a  full  harmonic  close.  Since  Hervieu  did  not 
develop  his  theme  broadly  and  allowed  it  to  de- 
generate into  the  theatric  device  of  guessing  the 
girl,  he  might  have  followed  Frank  Stockton 
and  Richard  Strauss  —  withheld  the  complete 
denouement  and  sent  us  home  wondering.  But 
his  artistic  conscience  began  to  operate  at  the 
close  of  Act  II,  and  not  daring  in  Act  III,  he 
despatches  his  young  lover  out  to  the  dewy 
morn,  there  to  shoot  himself.  This  suicide  cuts 
226 


PAUL   HERVIEU 

the  tangle.  The  sister  who  quails  at  the  news 
is  the  guilty  one  —  a  Solomon-like  judgment,  if 
ever  there  was  one. 

The  gunshot  rouses  the  women.  Leonore  it 
is  who  shudders  and  screams ;  Giselle  is  only 
shocked.  The  complacent  face  of  her  husband 
at  this  juncture  is  a  study  in  selfishness.  Leo- 
nore's  husband  throttles  her  and  is  pulled  off  just 
in  time.  He  bids  her  live  —  he  knows  how  to 
torture ;  and  as  the  curtain  falls  the  Marquis  in 
the  centre  of  the  picture  invokes  the  curse  of 
heaven  on  a  social  system  that  tolerates  such 
hideous  cruelty. 

It  may  be  seen  that  the  intellectual  playwright 
takes  advantage  of  a  situation  in  Pagliacci  or  in 
Catulle  Mendes's  La  Femme  de  Tabarin ;  when 
the  lover  is  being  killed  or  is  killed,  the  grief  of 
the  "  guilty "  wife  betrays  her  secret  to  the 
world.  It  is  lacking  in  novelty,  yet  a  sound 
situation  psychologically.  The  torture  motive  is 
not  new. 

However,  Paul  Hervieu's  reputation  does  not 
stand  or  fall  on  this  drama  any  more  than  it 
does  on  his  novels,  Flirt  and  L' Armature.  Les 
Paroles  Restent  has  a  theme  cleverly  invented, 
above  all  cleverly  handled.  A  man  sets  in 
motion  a  lie  about  a  young  girl  in  society, 
though  he  believes  it  is  the  truth.  Later  he 
meets  and  loves  her.  His  remorse  is  great  when 
he  discovers  that  she  is  innocent.  To  make 
reparation  (oh,  masculine  vanity  of  vanities  !)  he 
resolves  to  confess  both  his  love  and  his  fault. 
227 


ICONOCLASTS 

He  does  so.  The  woman,  Regine  de  Vesles,  is 
outraged  in  her  pride,  in  her  love,  to  discover 
that  her  secret  calumniator  is  the  man  she  has 
adored.  She  parts  from  him.  A  duel  is  pre- 
cipitated —  lugged  in  by  the  hair,  really  —  and 
De  Nohan  is  dangerously  wounded.  Naturally 
Regine  goes  to  his  bedside  and  pardons  him. 
They  are  sure  to  be  happy.  Alas !  les  paroles 
restent,  and  after  De  Nohan  hears  repeated  his 
vile  slander  he  dies.  The  situations  are  effective 
throughout,  the  character-drawing  subtle. 

This  play  is  full  of  melodrama,  and,  as  has  been 
pointed  out,  contains  "  several  weapons  borrowed 
from  the  arsenal  of  the  inexhaustible  Scribe." 
Hervieu  followed  it  with  Les  Tenailles,  which 
was  at  once  a  challenge  to  his  critic  and 
a  greater  play.  Tenailles  (nippers)  —  horrible 
word  !  Here  the  author  gives  us  human  nature 
in  the  raw.  A  woman  is  married  to  a  man  she 
does  not  love.  He,  it  appears,  makes  no  attempt 
to  secure  her  love.  She  really  loves  a  famous 
man,  a  traveller.  She  tells  her  husband  so. 
She  will  not  deceive  him,  as  other  feebler 
women  would ;  she  must  leave  at  once.  But 
the  husband  of  Irene  Fergan  is  cool-headed. 
He  asks  his  wife  how  she  proposes  to  escape  the 
hateful  marriage  tie.  She  must  give  the  law  a 
reason,  a  motive.  Collusion  is  the  only  remedy, 
and  he  will  not  enter  into  any  such  conspiracy. 
Then  she  declares  she  will  run  away.  Not  far, 
he  calmly  replies,  for  there  is  always  the  police. 
No  matter  what  she  does,  he  will  not  let  her  go. 
228 


PAUL   HERVIEU 

Bowing  her  head,  the  woman  submits.  The 
wife  is  the  prisoner  of  the  husband,  the  woman 
bond-slave  of  the  man,  despite  all  our  gabbling 
about  emancipation  and  equal  rights  in  this  en- 
lightened century. 

Ten  years  pass,  when  the  curtain  again  rises. 
There  is  a  child  ;  the  home  is  seemingly  a  placid 
one.  The  little  son  must  be  sent  to  school. 
Another  crisis.  There  is  a  terrible  duel  of 
words  and  will.  Enraged  she  cries,  "  The  child 
is  not  yours,"  and  then  confesses — no,  confesses 
is  not  the  word,  rather  boasts,  that  she  had  a 
lover,  the  man  she  always  loved,  the  traveller. 
The  husband  now  no  longer  claims  the  other's 
son ;  he  will  even  grant  the  divorce.  The 
culmination  comes  when  Irene  refuses  to  be 
thrust  out  of  doors, — the  child  has  just  passed 
through  the  room,  —  she  has  borne  the  agony  of 
ten  years.  They  must  go  hand  in  hand  manacled 
to  the  end,  let  the  nippers  gall  as  they  will. 
There  is  the  child.  Its  future  is  at  stake. 
"  But,"  the  man  whimpers,  "  you  are  guilty  and 
I  am  innocent."  — "  No,"  she  says,  "  we  are 
only  two  miserable  people,  and  misery  knows 
none  but  equals."  The  answer  is  like  the  harsh 
stroke  of  a  savage  alarm  bell.  It  startled  all 
Paris  for  many  months.  Les  paroles  restent ! 

The  Law  of  Man  is  even  more  tense  and  dis- 
agreeable than  its  predecessor.  Herein  the 
problem  posed  is  this  (for  with  Hervieu  the  play 
is  always  a  problem  ;  like  Ibsen  he  asks  ques- 
tions and  seldom  answers  them,  though  it  may 
229 


ICONOCLASTS 

be  premised  that  while  he  has  much  of  Ibsen's 
gloom  and  love  for  the  unusual,  he  lacks  the 
cold,  concentrated  logic  of  the  Norwegian): 
A  woman  surprises  her  husband  by  means  of 
letters,  but  does  not  leave  him.  Her  daughter 
falls  in  love  with  the  son  of  the  woman  who  has 
caused  the  trouble.  Poor  wife,  poor  mother, 
she  is  confused  at  these  crossroads  of  misery. 
Sacrifice  her  daughter  and  appease  her  ven- 
geance, or  —  hold  her  silence  for  evermore?  She 
prefers  the  former,  and  summoning  the  husband 
of  her  own  husband's  mistress,  the  father  of  the 
young  man  who  seeks  the  hand  of  her  innocent 
daughter,  she  tells  the  secret.  After  the  first 
natural  rage,  this  undeceived  man,  more  merci- 
ful than  the  woman,  insists  on  her  silence. 
Two  innocent  young  folk  must  not  have  their 
happiness  slain  because  of  their  parents'  sins. 
And  as  it  is  his  right,  the  selfish  and  wretched 
woman  must  submit.  A  way  is  found  to  make 
the  lovers  happy,  and  the  play  ends,  leaving  all 
sorts  of  interrogation  marks  in  the  air.  There 
are  big  things  in  this  drama. 

La  Course  du  Flambeau  played  by  Rejane 
with  such  striking  effect  is  judged  by  some  of 
Hervieu's  admirers  as  his  masterpiece.  It  is 
not,  though  an  exceedingly  interesting  work 
replete  with  wisdom  and  several  strong  studies 
of  character.  Sabine  Revel,  who  sacrifices  her 
mother  for  the  sake  of  her  daughter  and  is  in 
turn  herself  sacrificed,  illustrates  the  not  un- 
common fate  of  a  selfish  daughter  and  a  too 
230 


PAUL   HERVIEU 

fond  mother.  The  Greek  motto  embodied  in  the 
title — the  passing  on  of  the  illuminated  torch, 
according  to  Lucretius,  at  the  "lampadophories" 
festival  in  Athens  —  is  employed  by  the  drama- 
tist as  a  symbol  of  the  chain  of  life,  the  light 
passed  on  from  one  generation  to  another  with 
the  sacrificing  of  the  old  by  the  young  which 
characterizes  human  existence. 

Yet  there  is  no  hint  of  Ibsen  in  this  symbol ; 
Hervieu  is  a  painter  of  manners,  and  a  psychol- 
ogist, not  a  poet.  He  confessed  to  me,  while 
graciously  submitting  to  be  "interviewed,"  that 
Ibsen  has  had  little  part  in  his  development. 
He  is  a  true  Frenchman  and  really  derives  from 
Dumas  fits  in  his  love  of  the  problem  posed ; 
while  his  cerebral  temperament  makes  him  more 
of  a  disciple  of  Stendhal  and  Becque  than  of  the 
very  emotional,  modern  Germans  and  Scandi- 
navians. Yet  he  has  an  emotive  temperament 
—  a  glance  at  his  sympathetic  eyes  will  prove 
it  He  is  a  man  with  too  large  a  head  for  his 
frame.  He  feels  too  deeply  to  be  happy. 
M.  Alfred  Binet,  in  his  precise  psychological 
study  of  the  dramatist,  describes  his  sober 
methods  of  travail,  his  slow  composition,  his 
philosopher's  dislike  of  the  hasty  or  the  impro- 
vised, and  his  fondness  for  clearly  articulated 
dialogue.  He  has  the  logical  imagination,  he 
disdains  the  Zola  "  human  documents  "  in  pre- 
paring his  story,  and  while  he  is  by  nature  an 
ironist,  he  is  too  serious  in  his  outlook  on  life 
to  play  the  part  of  a  mystifier.  "  Irony  is  the 
231 


ICONOCLASTS 

speech  of  the  timid  man,"  he  said  to  me,  when 
we  spoke  of  Becque  and  his  too  cynical  disci- 
ples. An  anxious  sincerity  is  the  key-note  of 
M.  Hervieu's  character.  He  abhors  the  facile 
triumphs  of  the  Parisian  play-maker  who  dallies 
with  ignoble  themes.  A  finely  attuned  intellect, 
a  plentiful  sympathy  with  suffering,  a  special  sen- 
sitiveness to  the  soul  feminine,  combined  with 
real  artistry,  —  though  he  despises  mere  tech- 
nical dexterity,  —  all  have  made  Paul  Hervieu 
the  present  master-psychologist  of  the  French 
stage. 


VI 

THE   QUINTESSENCE  OF  SHAW 


To  my  friend,  George  Bernard  Shaw,  the  Celtic  super- 
man, critic,  novelist,  socialist,  and  preface  writer,  to  whom 
the  present  author  —  circa  1890  —  played  the  part  of  a 
critical  finger-post  for  the  everlasting  benefit  (he  sincerely 
hopes)  of  the  great  American  public ;  and  to  whom  he  now 
dedicates  this  particular  essay  in  gratitude  for  the  rare  and 
stimulating  pleasure  afforded  him  by  the  Shaw  masques, 
the  Shavian  philosophy,  and  also  the  vivid  remembrance 
of  several  personal  encounters  at  London  and  Bayreuth. 

THE  announcement  that  Bernard  Shaw,  moral- 
ist, Fabianite,  vegetarian,  playwright,  critic,  Wag  - 
nerite,  Ibsenite,  jester  to  the  cosmos,  and  the 
most  serious  man  on  the  planet,  had  written  a 
play  on  the  subject  of  Don  Juan  did  not  surprise 
his  admirers.  As  Nietzsche  philosophized  with 
a  hammer,  so  G.  B.  S.  hammers  popular  myths. 
If  you  have  read  his  Caesar  and  Cleopatra  you 
will  know  what  I  mean.  This  witty,  sarcastic 
piece  is  the  most  daring  he  has  attempted. 
Some  years  ago  I  described  the  Shaw  literary 
pedigree  as  —  W.  S.  Gilbert  out  of  Ibsen.  His 
plays  are  full  of  modern  odds  and  ends,  and  in 
form  are  anything  from  the  Robertsonian  com- 
233 


ICONOCLASTS 

edy  to  the  Gilbertian  extravaganza.  They  may 
be  called  psychical  farce,  an  intellectual  come- 
die  rosse  —  for  his  people  are  mostly  a  black- 
guard crew  of  lively  marionettes  all  talking  pure 
Shaw-ese.  Mr.  Shaw  has  invented  a  new  indi- 
vidual in  literature  who  for  want  of  a  better 
name  could  be  called  the  Super-Cad ;  he  is  Nietz- 
sche's Superman  turned  "  bounder  "  —  and  some- 
times the  sex  is  feminine. 

We  wonder  what  sort  of  drama  this  remarkable 
Hibernian  would  have  produced  if  he  had  been 
a  flesh-eater.  If  he  is  so  brilliant  on  bran,  what 
could  he  not  have  accomplished  on  blood !  One 
thing  is  certain  —  at  the  cosmical  banquet  where 
Shaw  sits  is  the  head  of  the  table  —  for  him. 

When  Bernard  Shaw  told  a  gaping  world  that 
he  was  only  a  natural-born  mountebank  with  a 
cart  and  a  trumpet,  a  sigh  of  relief  was  exhaled 
in  artistic  London.  So  many  had  been  taking 
him  seriously  and  swallowing  his  teachings, 
preachings,  and  prommciamentos,  that  to  hear 
the  merryman  was  only  shamming,  came  as  a 
species  of  liberation  from  a  cruel  obsession. 
Without  paying  the  customary  critical  toll,  Shaw 
had  slipped  duty  free  into  England  all  manners 
of  damnable  doctrines.  What  George  Moore 
attempted  in  a  serious  manner  George  Shaw, 
a  fellow-Irishman,  succeeded  in  accomplishing 
without  the  chorale  of  objurgation,  groans,  ex- 
clamations of  horror,  and  blasts  of  puritanical 
cant.  Thus  Proudhon,  Marx,  Lassalle,  Ibsen, 
Wagner,  Nietzsche,  and  a  lot  of  free-thinkers 
234 


THE    QUINTESSENCE   OF    SHAW 

in  socialism,  religion,  philosophy,  and  art,  walked 
unmolested  through  the  pages  of  critical  reviews, 
while  Mr.  Moore  was  almost  pilloried  for  advo- 
cating naturalism,  while  Vizetelly  was  sent  to 
prison  for  translating  Zola. 

After  the  Shaw  criticisms  came  the  novels, 
then  the  plays.  The  prefaces  of  the  latter  are 
literature,  and  will  be  remembered  with  joy 
when  the  plays  are  forgotten.  In  them  the 
author  has  distilled  the  quintessence  of  Shaw. 
They  will  be  classics  some  day,  as  the  Dry- 
den  prefaces  are  classics.  Nevertheless,  in  the 
plays  we  find  the  old  Shaw  masquerading,  this 
time  behind  the  footlights.  He  is  still  the 
preacher,  Fabian  debater,  socialist,  vegetarian, 
lycanthrope,  and  normally  abnormal  man  of  the 
early  days  —  though  he  prides  himself  on  his 
abnormal  normality.  Finding  that  the  essay 
did  not  reach  a  wide  enough  audience,  the  wily 
Celt  mounts  the  rostrum  and  blarneys  his  listen- 
ers something  after  this  manner  :  — 

"  Here's  my  hustings ;  from  here  will  I 
teach,  preach,  and  curse  the  conventions  of 
society.  Come  all  ye  who  are  tired  of  the  prop- 
erty fallacy  !  There  is  but  one  Karl  Marx,  and 
I  am  his  living  prophet.  Shakespeare  must 
go  —  Ibsen  is  to  rule.  Wagner  was  a  Fabian- 
ite ;  the  Ring  proves  it.  Come  all  ye  who  are 
heaven-laden  with  the  moralities !  I  am  the 
living  witness  for  Nietzsche.  I  will  teach  chil- 
dren to  renounce  the  love  of  parents;  parents 
to  despise  their  offspring ;  husbands  to  hate 
235 


ICONOCLASTS 

their  wives ;  wives  to  loathe  their  husbands ; 
and  brothers  and  sisters  will  raise  warring 
hands  after  my  words  have  entered  their  souls. 
Whatever  is  is  wrong  —  to  alter  Pope.  The 
prostitute  classes,  —  I  do  not  balk  at  the  ugly 
word,  —  clergymen,  doctors,  lawyers,  statesmen, 
journalists,  are  deceiving  you.  They  speak  in 
divers  and  lying  tongues.  I  alone  possess  the 
prophylactic  against  the  evils  of  life.  Here  it 
is  :  Plays,  Pleasant  and  Unpleasant ;  and  Three 
Plays  for  Puritans." 

But  Shaw  only  removed  another  of  his  in- 
numerable masks.  Beware,  says  Nietzsche,  of 
the  autobiographies  of  great  men.  He  was 
thinking  of  Richard  Wagner.  His  warning 
applies  to  Bernard  Shaw,  who  is  a  great  come- 
dian and  a  versatile.  He  has  spoken  through 
so  many  different  masks  that  the  real  Shaw  is 
yet  to  be  seen.  Perhaps  on  his  death-bed  some 
stray  phrase  will  illuminate  with  its  witty  gleam 
his  true  soul's  nature.  He  has  played  tag  with 
this  soul  so  long  that  some  of  it  has  been  lost 
in  the  game.  Irishman  born,  he  is  not  genial 
after  the  Oliver  Goldsmith  type;  he  resembles 
much  more  closely  Dean  Swift,  minus  that 
man's  devouring  genius.  When  will  the  last 
mask  be  lifted  —  and,  awful  to  relate,  will  it, 
when  lifted,  reveal  the  secret  ?  A  master  hyp- 
notist perhaps  he  may  be,  illuding  the  world 
with  the  mask  idea.  And  what  a  comical  thing 
it  would  be  to  find  him  smiling  at  the  end  and 
remarking,  "  I  fooled  you,  Brethren,  didn't  I  ? " 
236 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

In  his  many  roles  one  trait  has  obstinately 
remained,  the  trait  of  irresistible  waggery.  Yet 
we  sadly  suspect  it.  What  if  this  declaration 
of  charlatanism  were  but  a  mask!  What  if 
Shaw  were  really  sincere !  What  if  he  really 
meant  to  be  sincere  in  his  various  lectures  and 
comedies !  What  if  his  assumption  of  insin- 
cerity were  sincere !  His  sincerity  insincere ! 
The  thought  confuses.  In  one  of  his  plays  — 
The  Philanderer  —  a  certain  character  has  five 
or  six  natures.  Shaw  again,  toujours  Shaw  ! 

Joke  of  all  jokes,  I  really  imagine  that  Shaw  is 
a  sentimentalist  in  private  ;  and  that  he  has  been 
so  sentimental,  romantic,  in  his  youth,  that  an  in- 
version has  taken  place  in  his  feelings.  Swift's 
hatred  of  mankind  was  a  species  of  inverted 
lyricism ;  so  was  Flaubert's ;  so  may  be  Shaw's. 
Fancy  him  secretly  weeping  over  Jane  Eyre, 
or  holding  a  baby  in  his  lap,  or  —  richest  of  all 
fancies  —  occasionally  eating  sausage  and  drink- 
ing beer !  I  met  him,  once  upon  a  time,  in 
Bayreuth.  He  spoke  then  in  unmeasured  terms 
of  its  beer  drinkers,  and  added,  without  the 
ghost  of  a  smile,  that  breweries  should  be  con- 
verted into  insane  asylums. 

Whether  we  take  him  seriously  or  not,  he  is 
a  delightful,  an  entertaining  writer.  His  facile 
use,  with  the  aid  of  the  various  mouthpieces  he 
assumes  at  will,  of  the  ideas  of  Nietzsche,  Wag- 
ner, Ibsen,  and  Strindberg,  fairly  dazzles.  He 
despises  wit  at  bottom,  using  its  forms  as  a 
medium  for  the  communication  of  his  theories. 
237 


ICONOCLASTS 

Art  for  art's  sake  is  a  contradiction  to  this 
writer.  He  must  have  a  sense  of  beauty,  but 
he  never  boasts  of  it ;  rather  does  he  seem  to 
consider  it  something  naked,  almost  shameful  — 
something  to  be  hidden  away.  So  his  men  are 
always  deriding  art,  though  working  at  it  like 
devils  on  high  pay.  This  puritanical  vein  has 
grown  with  the  years,  as  it  has  with  Tolstoy. 
Only  Shaw  never  wasted  his  youth  in  riotous 
living,  as  did  Tolstoy. 

He  had  no  money,  no  opportunities,  no  taste. 
A  fierce  ascetic  and  a  misogynist,  he  will  have 
no  regrets  at  threescore  and  ten;  no  sweet 
memories  of  headaches  —  he  is  a  teetotaller; 
no  heartaches  —  he  is  too  busy  with  his  books ; 
and  no  bitter  aftertaste  for  having  wronged  a 
fellow-being.  Behold,  Bernard  Shaw  is  a  good 
man,  has  led  the  life  of  a  saint,  worked  like  a 
hero  against  terrible  odds,  and  is  the  kindest- 
hearted  man  in  London.  Now  we  have  reached 
another  mask  —  the  mask  of  altruism.  Nearly 
all  his  earnings  went  to  the  needy ;  his  was,  and 
is,  a  practical  socialism.  He  never  let  his  right 
hand  know  the  extent  of  his  charities,  and  mark 
this,  —  no  one  else  knew  of  it.  Yet  good  deeds, 
like  murder,  will  out.  His  associates  ceased  de- 
riding the  queer  clothes,  the  flannel  shirt,  and 
the  absence  of  evening  dress ;  his  money  was 
spent  on  others.  So,  too,  his  sawdust  menu,  — 
his  carrots,  cabbage,  and  brown  bread,  —  it  did 
not  cost  much,  his  eating,  for  his  money  was 
needed  by  poorer  folk.  So  you  see  what  a 
238 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

humbug  is  this  dear  old  Diogenes,  who  growls 
cynically  at  the  human  race,  abhors  sentiment- 
mongers,  and  despises  conventional  government, 
art,  religion,  and  philosophy.  He  is  an  arch- 
sentimentalist,  underneath  whose  frown  are  con- 
cealed tears  of  pity.  Another  mask  torn  away 
—  Bernard  Shaw,  philanthropist ! 

He  tells  us  in  the  preface  to  Cashel  Byron's 
Profession  —  which  sounds  like  the  title  of  a 
Charles  Lever  novel  —  that  he  had  a  narrow 
escape  from  being  a  novelist  at  the  age  of 
twenty-six.  He  still  shudders  over  it.  He 
wrote  five  novels,  three  of  which  we  know,  to 
wit :  Cashel  Byron's  Profession,  An  Unsocial 
Socialist,  Love  Among  the  Artists  —  hideous 
and  misleading  title.  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
took  a  great  fancy  to  Cashel  Byron  and  its  stun- 
ning eulogies  of  pugilism.  It  was  even  drama- 
tized in  this  country.  With  Hazlitt  and  George 
Meredith  (oh !  unforgettable  prize-fight  in  The 
Amazing  Marriage)  Mr.  Shaw  praised  the 
noble  art  of  sluggerei.  The  Unsocial  Socialist 
contains  at  least  one  act  of  a  glorious  farce 
comedy.  He  is  Early  British  in  his  comedic 
writing.  It  is  none  the  less  capital  fun. 

This  book  or  tract  —  it  is  hardly  a  novel  — 
contains  among  other  extraordinary  things  a 
eulogy  of  photography  that  would  delight  the 
soul  of  a  Steichen.  Shaw  places  it  far 
above  painting  because  of  its  verisimilitude  !  It 
also  introduces  a  lot  of  socialistic  talk  which 
is  very  unconvincing  ;  the  psycho-physiologist 
239 


ICONOCLASTS 

would  really  pronounce  the  author  a  perfect 
specimen  in  full  flowering  ef  the  saintly  an- 
arch. There  is  a  role  played  by  a  character 
—  Shaw  ?  —  which  recalls  Leonard  Charteris  in 
a  later  play,  The  Philanderer.  All  of  his 
men  are  modelled  off  the  same  block.  They 
are  a  curious  combination  of  blackguard,  phi- 
losopher, "  bounder,"  artist,  and  comedian.  His 
women  !  Recall  Stevenson's  dismayed  exclama- 
tion at  the  Shaw  women !  They  are  creatures 
who  have  read  Ibsen ;  are,  one  is  sure,  dowdy ; 
but  they  interest.  While  you  wonder  at  the 
strength  of  their  souls,  you  do  not  miss  the  size 
of  their  feet.  Mr.  Shaw  refuses  to  see  woman 
as  a  heroine.  She  is  sometimes  a  breeder  of 
sinners,  always  a  chronicler  of  the  smallest  kind 
of  small  beer,  and  for  fear  this  sounds  like  an 
I  ago  estimate,  he  dowers  her  with  an  astounding 
intellectual  equipment,  and  then  lets  the  curious 
compound  work  out  its  own  salvation. 

He  is  much  more  successful  with  his  servants ; 
witness  Bashville  in  Cashel  Byron's  Profession, 
most  original  of  lackeys,  and  the  tenderly 
funny  old  waiter  in  You  Never  Can  Tell,  a  bit- 
ter farce  well  sprinkled  with  the  Attic  salt  of 
irony.  Otherwise  Mr.  Shaw  has  spent  his  time 
tilting  at  flagellation,  at  capital  punishment,  at 
the  abuse  of  punctuation,  at  the  cannibalistic 
habit  of  eating  the  flesh  of  harmless  animals  at 
Christmas,  at  Going  to  Church,  extolling  Czol- 
gosz  —  heavens !  the  list  is  a  league  long.  His 
novels  as  a  whole  are  disappointing,  though 
240 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

George  Meredith  has  assured  us  in  the  first 
chapter  of  Diana  that  brain  stuff  in  fiction  is  not 
lean  stuff.  But  there  are  some  concessions  to 
be  made  to  the  Great  God  Beauty,  and  these 
Mr.  Shaw  has  not  seen  fit  to  make.  Episodes 
of  brilliancy,  force,  audacity,  there  are ;  but 
episodes  only.  The  psychology  of  a  musician 
is  admirably  set  forth  in  Love  Among  the 
Artists,  and  the  story,  in  addition,  contains  one 
of  the  most  lifelike  portraits  of  a  Polish  pianiste 
that  has  ever  been  painted.  John  Sargent 
could  have  done  no  better  in  laying  bare  a  soul. 
Ugliness  is  rampant  —  ugliness  and  brutality.  It 
is  all  as  invigorating  as  a  bath  of  salt  water 
when  the  skin  is  peeled  off  —  it  burns  ;  you 
howl ;  Shaw  grins.  He  hates  with  all  the  vigour 
of  his  big  brain  and  his  big  heart  to  hear  of  the 
infliction  of  physical  pain.  He  does  not  always 
spare  his  readers.  Three  hundred  years  ago  he 
would  have  roasted  heretics,  for  there  is  much 
of  the  grand  inquisitor,  the  John  Calvin,  the 
John  Knox,  in  Shaw.  He  will  rob  himself  of 
his  last  copper  to  give  you  food,  and  he  will 
belabour  you  with  words  that  assault  the  tym- 
panum if  you  disagree  with  him  on  the  subject 
of  Ibsen,  Wagner,  or  —  anything  he  likes. 

Beefsteak,  old  Scotch  ale,  a  pipe,  and  Mon- 
taigne —  are  what  he  needs  for  one  year.  Then 
his  inhumane  criticism  of  poor,  stumbling  man- 
kind's foibles  might  be  tempered.  Shaw  de- 
spises weakness.  He  follows  to  the  letter 
Nietzsche's  injunction,  Be  hard !  And  there 
241 


ICONOCLASTS 

is  something  in  him  of  Ibsen's  pitiless  attitude 
toward  the  majority,  which  is  always  in  the 
wrong;  yet  is,  all  said  and  done,  the  majority. 
Facts,  reality,  truth  —  no  Gradgrind  ever  de- 
manded them  more  imperiously  than  Heervatei 
Shaw,  whose  red  beard  and  locks  remind  one 
of  Conrad  in  Die  Meistersinger.  Earth  folk  do 
everything  to  dodge  the  facts  of  life,  to  them 
cold,  harsh,  and  at  the  same  time  fantastic. 
Every  form  of  anodyne,  ethical,  intellectual, 
aesthetical,  is  resorted  to  to  deaden  the  pain  of 
reality.  We  work  to  forget  to  live ;  our  religions, 
art,  philosophy,  patriotism,  are  so  many  buffers 
between  the  soul  of  man  and  bitter  truth. 

Shaw  wants  the  truth  at  all  hazards ;  his 
habit  of  veracity  is  like  that  of  Gregers's  Werle, 
is  shocking.  So  he  dips  his  subjects  into  a 
bath  of  muriatic  acid  and  seems  surprised  at 
their  wrigglings  and  their  screams.  "  But  I 
don't  want  to  hear  the  truth  !  "  yells  the  victim, 
who  then  limps  back  to  his  comfortable  lies. 
And  the  one  grievous  error  is  that  our  gallant 
slayer  of  dragons,  our  Celtic  Siegfried,  does 
not  believe  in  the  illusions  of  art.  Its  veils, 
consoling  and  beautiful,  he  will  not  have,  and 
thus  it  is  that  his  dramas  are  amusing,  witty, 
brilliant,  scarefying,  but  never  poetic,  never 
beautiful,  and  seldom  sound  the  deeper  tones  of 
humanity.  With  an  artist's  brain,  he  stifles  the 
artist's  soul  in  him  —  as  Ibsen  never  did.  With 
all  his  liberalism  he  cannot  be  liberal  to  liber- 
alism, as  Gilbert  Chesterton  so  neatlv  puts  it. 
242 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

The  Perfect  Wagnerite  and  The  Quintessence 
of  Ibsenism  are  two  supernally  clever  jeux 
d'esprit.  As  he  reads  Shaw  and  Fabianism 
into  the  Ring  of  the  Nibelungs,  so  his  Ibsen 
is  transformed  into  a  magnified  image  of  Shaw 
dropping  ideas  from  on  high  with  Olympian 
indifference.  This  pamphlet,  among  the  first 
of  its  kind  in  English,  now  seems  a  trifle  old- 
fashioned  in  its  interpretation  of  the  Norwegian 
dramatist — possibly  because  he  is  something  so 
different  from  what  Mr.  Shaw  pictured  him. 
We  are  never  shown  Ibsen  the  artist,  but  al- 
ways the  social  reformer  with  an  awful  frown. 
He  was  a  fighter  for  Ibsen,  when  in  London 
Ibsen  was  once  regarded  as  a  perverter  of 
morals.  Bravery  is  Bernard's  trump  card.  He 
never  flinched  yet,  whether  answering  cat-calls 
from  a  first  night's  gallery  or  charging  with  pen 
lowered  lance-fashion  upon  some  unfortunate 
clerical  blockhead  who  endeavoured  to  prove 
that  hell  is  too  good  for  sinners. 

It  is  easy  to  praise  Mozart  to-day  ;  not  so  easy 
to  demonstrate  the  genius  of  Richard  Strauss. 
Wagner  in  1888  was  still  a  bogie-man,  a  horrid 
hobgoblin  threatening  the  peace  of  academic 
British  music.  Shaw  took  up  the  fight,  just 
as  he  fought  for  Degas  and  Manet  when  he 
was  an  art  critic.  I  still  preserve  with  reverence 
his  sweeping  answer  to  Max  Nordau.  It  wiped 
Nordau  off  the  field  of  discussion. 

And  the  plays !  They,  too,  are  controversial. 
They  all  prove  something,  and  prove  it  so  hard 
243 


ICONOCLASTS 

that  presently  the  play  is  swallowed  up  by  its 
thesis  —  the  horse  patiently  follows  the  cart 
It  may  not  be  art,  but  it  is  magnificent  Shaw. 
You  can  skip  the  plays,  not  the  prefaces. 
Widowers'  Houses  is  the  most  unpleasant,  ugly, 
damnably  perverse  of  the  ten.  The  writer  had 
read  Ibsen's  An  Enemy  of  the  People  too  closely. 
Its  drainpipes,  and  not  its  glorification  of  the 
individual,  got  into  his  brain.  It  filtered  forth 
bereft  of  its  strength  and  meaning  in  this  piece, 
with  its  nasty  people,  its  stupidities.  How  could 
Shaw  be  so  philistine,  so  much  like  a  vestryman 
interested  in  pauper  lodgings?  In  the  impla- 
cable grasp  of  Ibsen,  this  sordid  theme  would 
have  been  beaten  on  a  red-hot  anvil  until  shaped 
to  something  of  purpose  and  power.  Shaw  was 
not  blacksmith  enough  to  swing  the  Ibsen 
hammer  and  handle  the  Ibsen  bellows.  He 
has  written  me  on  this  subject  that  if  I  were 
a  resident  of  London  I  would  see  my  way  clearer 
toward  liking  this  play.  It  is,  he  asserts,  a  tran- 
script of  the  truth  —  which  still  leaves  my  argu- 
ment on  its  legs. 

The  Philanderer,  with  its  irresponsible  levity 
and  unexpected  contortions,  is  a  comedy  of  the 
true  Shaw  order.  It  is  his  Wild  Duck,  for  in  it 
he  pokes  fun  at  an  Ibsen  club,  at  the  New 
Woman,  and  the  New  Sentiment,  at  almost 
everything  he  upholds  in  other  plays  and  ways. 
There  is  a  dramatic  critic  slopping  over  with 
British  sentiment  and  other  liquids.  The  women 
are  absolutely  incredible.  The  first  act,  like 
244 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

most  of  the  Shaw  first  acts,  is  the  best ;  best 
because,  in  his  efforts  to  get  his  people  going, 
the  dramatist  has  little  time  to  sermonize.  He 
usually  gets  the  chance  later,  to  the  detriment 
of  his  structure.  The  first  act  of  The  Phi- 
landerer would  have  made  Henry  Becque  smile. 
It  has  something  of  the  Frenchman's  mordant 
irony  —  and  then  you  never  know  what  is  going 
to  happen.  The  behaviour  of  the  two  women  re- 
calls a  remark  of  Shaw's  apropos  of  Strindberg  ; 
Strindberg,  who  "  shows  that  the  female  Yahoo, 
measured  by  romantic  standards,  is  viler  than 
her  male  dupe  and  slave."  Here  the  conditions 
are  reversed;  there  is  no  romance;  the  dupes 
are  women,  and  also  the  Yahoos.  The  exposure 
of  Julia's  soul,  poor,  mean,  sentimental,  suffer- 
ing little  creature,  withal  heroic,  would  please 
Strindberg  himself.  The  play  has  an  autobio- 
graphic ring. 

As  to  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession.  It  was 
played  January  12,  1902,  in  London,  by  the 
Stage  Society.  Mr.  Grein  says  that  Mrs.  War- 
ren's Profession  is  literature  for  the  study.  The 
mother  is  a  bore,  wonderfully  done  in  spots  (the 
spots  especially)  and  the  daughter  a  chilly, 
waspish  prig.  The  men  are  better ;  Sir  George 
Crofts  and  the  philandering  young  fellow  could 
not  be  clearer  expressed  in  terms  of  ink.  I 
imagine  that  in  a  performance  they  must  be 
extremely  vital.  And  that  weak  old  rou/  of  a 
clergyman  —  why  is  Shaw  so  severe  on  clergy- 
men ?  For  the  rest,  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession 
245 


ICONOCLASTS 

creates  a  disagreeable  impression,  as  the  author 
intended  it  should.  I  consider  it  his  biggest, 
and  also  his  most  impossible,  optis. 

You  Can  Never  Tell,  Arms  and  the  Man, 
Candida,  and  The  Devil's  Disciple  are  a  quartet 
difficult  to  outpoint  for  prodigal  humour  and  in- 
genious fantasy.  In  London  the  first  named 
was  voted  irresistibly  funny.  It  is  funny,  and 
in  a  new  way,  though  the  framework  is  old- 
fashioned  British  farce  newly  veneered  by 
the  malicious,  the  roistering  humour  of  Shaw. 
Arms  and  the  Man  and  The  Devil's  Disciple 
have  been  in  Mr.  Mansfield's  repertory  for 
years ;  they  need  no  comment  further  than  say- 
ing that  the  first  has  something  of  the  Gilbertian 
Palace  of  Truth  topsy-turvying  quality  (Louka 
is  a  free  paraphrase  of  Regina  in  Ghosts,  though 
she  talks  Shaw  with  great  fluency),  with  a 
wholly  original  content  and  characterization ; 
and  the  second  is  perverse  melodrama. 

Candida  is  not  for  mixed  audiences.  Christian 
socialism  is  caviare  to  the  general.  In  charac- 
terization there  is  much  variety;  the  heroine  — 
if  there  be  such  an  anomaly  as  a  Shaw  heroine 
—  is  most  engaging.  Every  time  I  read  Candida 
I  feel  myself  on  the  trail  of  somebody ;  it  is  all 
in  the  air.  The  Lady  from  the  Sea  comes  back 
when  in  that  last  scene,  where  the  extraordinary 
young  poet  Marchbanks,  a  combination  of  the 
spiritual  qualities  of  Shelley,  Shaw,  Ibsen's 
Stranger,  and  Shelley  again,  dares  the  fatuous 
James  Morell  to  put  his  wife  Candida  to  the 
246 


THE   QUINTESSENCE    OF    SHAW 

test.  It  is  one  of  the  oddest  situations  in  dra- 
matic literature,  and  it  is  all  "  prepared  "  with 
infinite  skill.  The  denouement  is  another  of 
Mr.  Shaw's  shower  baths ;  withal  a  perfectly 
proper  and  highly  moral  ending.  You  grind 
your  teeth  over  it,  as  Mr.  Shaw  peeps  across 
the  top  of  the  page,  indulging  in  one  of  his 
irritating  dental  displays. 

The  Man  of  Destiny  is  a  mystification  in  one 
act.  Napoleon  talks  the  purest  Balzac  when  he 
describes  the  English,  and  Mr.  Shaw  manipu- 
lates the  wires  industriously.  It's  good  sport  of 
its  genre. 

Captain  Brassbound's  Conversion  is  pure 
farce.  But  the  joy  of  Caesar  and  Cleopatra  is 
abounding.  You  chortle  over  it  as  chortled 
Stevenson  over  the  footman.  A  very  devil  of  a 
play,  one  to  read  after  Froude,  Michelet,  Shake- 
speare, or  Voltaire  for  the  real  facts  of  the  case. 
Since  Suetonius,  it  is  the  first  attempt  at  true 
Cassarean  history.  And  the  stage  directions 
out-Maeterlinck  Maeterlinck  with  their  elabo- 
rate intercalations.  The  gorgeous  humour  of 
it  all ! 

Arms  and  the  Man  has  been  translated  into 
German  and  played  in  Germany.  What  will 
the  Germans  say  to  Caesar  and  Cleopatra  ?  They 
take  Shaw  too  seriously  now,  which  is  almost  as 
bad  as  not  taking  him  seriously  at  all.  What 
will  the  doctors  of  history  do  when  the  amazing 
character  of  Cleopatra  is  dissected  ?  If  Shaw 
had  never  written  another  line  but  this  bubbling 
247 


ICONOCLASTS 

study  of  antiquity,  in  which  the  spirit  of  the 
opera  bouffe  has  not  entered,  he  would  be  entitled 
to  a  free  pass  to  that  pantheon  wherein  our 
beloved  Mark  Twain  sits  enthroned.  It  is  all 
truth-telling  on  a  miraculous  plane  of  reality,  a 
reality  which  modulates  and  merges  into  fantasy. 
One  almost  forgets  the  prefaces  and  the  notes 
after  reading  Caesar  and  Cleopatra. 

Whether  he  will  ever  vouchsafe  the  world  a 
masterpiece,  who  can  say  ?  Why  demand  so 
much  ?  Is  not  he  in  himself  a  masterpiece  ?  It 
depends  on  his  relinquishment  of  a  too  puritani- 
cal attitude  toward  art,  life,  and  roast  beef.  He 
is  too  pious.  Never  mind  his  second-hand 
Nietzsche,  his  Diabolonian  ethics,  and  his  mod- 
ern version  of  Carlylean  Baphometic  Baptisms. 
They  are  all  in  his  eye  —  that  absolutely  nor- 
mal eye  with  the  suppressed  Celtic  twinkle. 
He  doesn't  mean  a  word  he  utters.  (Who  does 
when  writing  of  Shaw?)  I  firmly  believe  he 
says  his  prayers  every  night  with  the  family 
before  he  goes  to  his  Jaeger-flannel  couch ! 


II 

Candida  is  the  very  quintessence  of  her  crea- 
tor. Many  prefer  this  sprightly  sermon  dis- 
guised as  a  comedy  to  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's 
more  serious  works.  Yet  serious  it  is.  No 
latter-day  paradoxioneer  —  to  coin  a  monster 
word,  for  the  Shaws,  Chestertons,  et  al.  —  evokes 
laughter  so  easily  as  the  Irishman.  His  is  a 
248 


THE  QUINTESSENCE  OF   SHAW 

cold  intellectual  wit,  a  Swiftian  wit,  minus  the 
hearty  and  wholesome  obscenity  of  the  great 
Dublin  dean.  But  it  is  often  misleading.  We 
laugh  when  we  should  reflect.  We  laugh  when 
we  might  better  hang  our  heads  —  this  is  meant 
for  the  average  married  and  bachelor  man. 
Shaw  strikes  fire  in  almost  every  sentence  he 
puts  into  Candida's  honest  mouth.  After  read- 
ing his  eloquent  tribute  to  Ibsen,  the  crooked 
places  in  Candida  become  plainer ;  her  mission 
is  not  alone  to  undeceive  but  to  love ;  not  only 
to  bruise  hearts  but  to  heal  them. 

In  a  singularly  vivid  passage  on  page  38 
of  The  Quintessence  of  Ibsenism,  Mr.  Shaw 
writes  :  "  When  Blake  told  men  that  through 
excess  they  would  learn  moderation,  he  knew 
that  the  way  for  the  present  lay  through  the 
Venusberg,  and  that  the  race  would  assuredly 
not  perish  there  as  some  individuals  have,  and 
as  the  Puritans  fear  we  all  shall  unless  we  find  a 
way  round.  Also,  he  no  doubt  foresaw  the  time 
when  our  children  would  be  born  on  the  other 
side  of  it,  and  so  be  spared  the  fiery  purga- 
tion." 

This  sentiment  occurs  in  the  chapter  devoted 
to  a  consideration  of  The  Womanly  Woman. 
Let  us  look  at  the  phrases  on  the  printed  page 
of  Candida  that  might  be  construed  as  bearing 
upon  the  above,  or,  rather,  the  result  of  the 
quoted  passage. 

Candida  speaks  to  James,  her  husband,  in 
Act  II :  — 

249 


ICONOCLASTS 

Don't  you  understand  ?  I  mean,  will  he  forgive 
me  for  not  teaching  him  myself  ?  For  abandoning 
him  to  the  bad  woman  for  the  sake  of  my  good- 
ness—  my  purity,  as  you  call  it?  Ah,  James,  how 
little  you  understand  me,  to  talk  of  your  confidence 
in  my  goodness  and  purity !  I  would  give  them 
both  to  poor  Eugene  as  willingly  as  I  would  give  my 
shawl  to  a  beggar  dying  of  cold,  if  there  were  noth- 
ing else  to  restrain  me.  Put  your  trust  in  my  love 
for  you,  James,  for  if  that  went  I  should  care  very 
little  for  your  sermons  —  mere  phrases  that  you  cheat 
yourself  and  others  with  every  day. 

Here  is  one  of  the  most  audacious  speeches  in 
any  modern  play.  It  has  been  passed  over  by 
most  English  critics  who  saw  in  Candida  merely 
an  attempt  to  make  a  clergyman  ridiculous,  not 
realizing  that  the  theme  is  profound  and  far- 
reaching,  the  question  put  being  no  more  and 
no  less  than :  Shall  a  married  man  expect  his 
wife's  love  without  working  for  it,  without  de- 
serving it  ?  Secure  in  his  conviction  that  he  was 
a  model  husband  and  a  good  Christian,  the  Rev. 
James  Mavor  Morell  went  his  way  smiling  and 
lecturing.  He  had  the  "gift  of  gab,"  yet  he 
was  no  humbug ;  indeed,  a  sincerer  parson  does 
not  exist.  He  is  quite  as  sincere  as  Pastor 
Manders,  much  broader  in  his  views,  and  conse- 
quently not  half  so  dull. 

But  he  is,  nevertheless,  a  bit  of  a  bore,  with 

his  lack  of  humour  and  his  grim  earnestness. 

No  doubt  Shaw   took   his  fling  at   that  queer 

blending  of  Christianity  and  socialism,  that  Karl 

250 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

Marx  in  a  parson's  collar  which  startled  London 
twenty  years  ago  in  the  person  of  the  Christian 
socialist  clergyman.  He  saw,  too,  being  a  man 
with  a  sense  of  character  values  and  their  use 
in  violent  contrast,  that  to  the  rhapsodic  and 
poetic  Eugene  Marchbanks,  Morell  would  prove 
a  splendid  foil.  And  so  he  does.  Between  this 
oddly  opposed  pair  stands  on  her  solid,  sensible 
underpinnings  the  figure  of  Candida.  Realist  as 
is  Mr.  Shaw,  he  would  scout  the  notion  of  his 
third  act  being  accepted  as  a  transcript  from 
life.  For  two  acts  we  are  in  plain  earthly  at- 
mosphere ;  unusual  things  happen,  though  not 
impossible  ones.  In  the  last  act  Shaw,  droll 
dramatist  and  acute  observer  of  his  fellow-man's 
foibles,  disappears,  only  to  return  in  the  guise 
of  Shaw  the  preacher. 

And  how  he  does  throw  a  sermon  at  our  heads  ! 
The  play  is  arrested  in  its  mid-ocean,  and  the 
shock  throws  us  almost  off  our  feet.  Do  not  be 
deceived.  That  mock  bidding  for  the  hand  of 
Candida,  surely  the  craziest  farce  ever  invented, 
is  but  this  author's  cunning  manner  of  driving 
home  his  lesson.  Are  you  worthy  of  your  wife  ? 
Is  the  woman  who  swore  to  love  and  honour  you 
("  obey  "  is  not  in  the  Shaw  vocabulary,  thanks 
to  J.  S.  Mill)  worthy  of  you  ?  If  your  love  is 
not  mutual  then  better  go  your  ways  —  you  pro- 
fane it!  Is  this  startling  ?  Is  this  novel?  No 
and  yes.  The  defence  of  love  for  love's  sake, 
coming  from  the  lips  of  a  Shaw  character,  has 
a  surprising  effect,  for  no  man  is  less  concerned 
251 


ICONOCLASTS 

with  sex  questions,  no  man  has  more  openly  de- 
preciated the  ascendancy  of  sex  in  art  and  litera- 
ture. He  would  be  the  first  to  applaud  eagerly 
Edmund  Clarence  Stedman's  question  apropos 
of  Walt  Whitman's  Leaves  of  Grass :  Is  there 
no  other  light  in  which  to  view  the  beloved  one 
than  as  the  future  mother  of  our  children?  (I 
trust  to  a  treacherous  memory  ;  the  meaning  is 
expressed,  though  not  in  Mr.  Stedman's  words.) 
Therefore  Candida  is  a  large  exposition  of  the 
doctrine  that  love  should  be  free,  —  which  is  by 
no  means  the  same  thing  as  free  love ;  that  it 
should  be  a  burden  equally  borne  by  both  part- 
ners in  the  yoke;  that  happiness,  instead  of 
misery,  would  result  if  more  women  resembled 
Candida  in  candour.  She  cut  James  to  the  heart 
with  the  confounding  of  her  shawl  and  per- 
sonal purity  ;  it  was  an  astounding  idea  for  a 
clergyman's  ears.  She  proved  to  him  later  that 
she  was  right,  that  the  hundredth  solitary  sinner 
is  of  more  consequence  than  the  ninety-nine  re- 
claimed. Shaw,  who  is  a  Puritan  by  tempera- 
ment, has,  after  his  master,  Ibsen,  cracked  with 
his  slingstone  many  nice  little  glass  houses 
wherein  complacent  men  and  women  sit  and 
sun  their  virtues  in  the  full  gaze  of  the  world. 
One  of  his  sharp  and  disconcerting  theories  is 
that  woman,  too,  can  go  through  the  Venusberg 
and  still  reach  the  heights  —  a  fact  always  de- 
nied by  the  egotistical  man,  who  wishes  to  be 
the  unique  sinner  so  that  he  may  receive  the 
unique  consolation.  After  a  gay  life,  a  sober 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

one ;  the  reformed  rake  ;  Tannhauser's  return  to 
an  Elizabeth,  who  awaits  him  patiently ;  dear, 
sweet,  virtuous  Penelope !  Shaw  sees  through 
this  humbug  of  the  masculine  pose  and  turns  the 
tables  by  making  his  Candida  ride  the  horse  of 
the  dilemma  man-fashion.  Maeterlinck,  in  his 
Monna  Vanna  and  Joyzelle,  enforces  the  same 
truth  —  that  love  to  be  love  should  be  free. 

And  the  paradoxical  part  of  it  all  is  that 
Candida  is  a  womanly  woman.  She  is  so  do- 
mestic, so  devoted,  that  the  thin-skinned  idealist 
Eugenie  moans  over  her  kitchen  propensities. 
Shaw  has  said  that  "  the  ideal  wife  is  one  who 
does  everything  that  the  ideal  husband  likes,  and 
nothing  else,"  which  is  a  neat  and  sardonic 
definition  of  the  womanly  woman's  duty.  Can- 
dida demands  as  her  right  her  husband's  trust 
in  her  love,  not  heavenly  rewards,  not  the  con- 
sciousness of  her  own  purity,  not  bolts  and  bars 
will  keep  her  from  going  from  him  if  the  hour 
strikes  the  end  of  her  affection.  All  of  which 
is  immensely  disconcerting  to  the  orthodox  of 
view,  for  it  is  the  naked  truth,  set  forth  by  a 
man  who  despises  not  orthodoxy,  but  those  who 
profess  it  only  to  practise  paganism.  This 
Shaw  is  a  terrible  fellow ;  and  the  only  way  to 
get  rid  of  a  terrible  fellow  is  not  to  take  him 
seriously  but  to  call  him  paradoxical,  entertain- 
ing ;  to  throw  the  sand  of  flattery  in  his  eyes  and 
incidentally  blind  criticism  at  the  same  time. 
But  Bernard  Shaw  has  always  refused  to  be 
cajoled,  and  as  to  the  sand  or  the  mud  of  abuse 
253 


ICONOCLASTS 

—  well,  he  wears  the  very  stout  spectacles  oi 
common  sense. 

Ill 

What  does  Mr.  Shaw  himself  think  of  Can- 
dida ?  Perhaps  if  he  could  be  persuaded  to  tell 
the  truth,  the  vapourish  misconceptions  concern- 
ing her  terrible  "  shawl  "  speech  —  about  which 
I  never  deceived  myself  —  might  be  dissipated. 
It  was  not  long  forthcoming  —  his  answer  to 
my  question,  an  answer  the  publication  of  which 
was  left  to  my  discretion.  It  may  shock  some 
of  his  admirers,  disconcert  others,  but  at  the 
same  time  it  will  clear  the  air  of  much  cant ;  for 
there  is  the  Candida  cant  as  well  as  the  anti 
Shaw  cant.  He  wrote  me  :  — 

Don't  ask  me  conundrums  about  that  very  immoral 
female,  Candida.  Observe  the  entry  of  W.  Burgess  : 
"  You're  the  lady  as  hused  to  typewrite  for  him." 
"No."  "  Naaaow  :  she  was  younger."  And  therefore 
Candida  sacked  her.  Prossy  is  a  very  highly  selected 
young  person  indeed,  devoted  to  Morel  1  to  the  extent 
of  helping  in  the  kitchen  but  to  him  the  merest  pet 
rabbit,  unable  to  get  the  slightest  hold  on  him.  Can- 
dida is  as  unscrupulous  as  Siegfried  :  Morell  himself 
sees  that  "no  law  will  bind  her."  She  seduces 
Eugene  just  exactly  as  far  as  it  is  worth  her  while  to 
seduce  him.  She  is  a  woman  without  "  character  " 
in  the  conventional  sense.  Without  brains  and 
strength  of  mind  she  would  be  a  wretched  slattern  or 
voluptuary.  She  is  straight  for  natural  reasons,  not 
for  conventional  ethical  ones.  Nothing  can  be  more 
254 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

cold-bloodedly  reasonable  than  her  farewell  to  Eu- 
gene :  "  All  very  well,  my  lad ;  but  I  don't  quite 
see  myself  at  fifty  with  a  husband  of  thirty-five."  It 
is  just  this  freedom  from  emotional  slop,  this  unerring 
wisdom  on  the  domestic  plane,  that  makes  her  so 
completely  mistress  of  the  situation. 

Then  consider  the  poet.  She  makes  a  man  of  him 
finally  by  showing  him  his  own  strength  —  that  David 
must  do  without  poor  Uriah's  wife.  And  then  she 
pitches  in  her  picture  of  the  home,  the  onions,  and 
the  tradesmen,  and  the  cossetting  of  big  baby  Morell. 
The  New  York  hausfrau  thinks  it  a  little  paradise  ; 
but  the  poet  rises  up  and  says,  "  Out  then,  into  the 
night  with  me  " — Tristan's  holy  night.  If  this  greasy 
fool's  paradise  is  happiness,  then  I  give  it  to  you 
with  both  hands,  "  life  is  nobler  than  that."  That 
is  the  "  poet's  secret."  The  young  things  in  front 
weep  to  see  the  poor  boy  going  out  lonely  and  broken- 
hearted in  the  cold  night  to  save  the  proprieties  of 
New  England  Puritanism  ;  but  he  is  really  a  god 
going  back  to  his  heaven,  proud,  unspeakably  con- 
temptuous of  the  "  happiness  "  he  envied  in  the  days 
of  his  blindness,  clearly  seeing  that  he  has  higher 
business  on  hand  than  Candida.  She  has  a  little 
quaint  intuition  of  the  completeness  of  his  cure ;  she 
says,  "  he  has  learnt  to  do  without  happiness." 

So  here  is  Shaw  on  Shaw,  Shaw  dissecting 
Candida,  Shaw  at  last  letting  in  light  on  the 
mystery  of  the  "  poet's  secret !  "  There  may  be 
grumbling  among  the  faithful  at  this  very  illumi- 
nating and  sensible  exposition,  I  feel.  So  thinks 
Mr.  Shaw,  for  he  adds,  "  As  I  should  certainly 
be  lynched  by  the  infuriated  Candidamaniacs 
255 


ICONOCLASTS 

if  this  view  of  the  case  were  made  known,  1 
confide  it  to  your  discretion "  —  which  by  a 
liberal  interpretation  means,  publish  it  and  be 
hanged  to  you  !  But  "  Candidamaniacs !  "  Oh, 
the  wicked  wit  of  this  man  who  can  thus  mock 
his  flock  !  His  coda  is  a  neat  summing  up  :  "I 
tell  it  to  you  because  it  is  an  interesting  sample 
of  the  way  in  which  a  scene,  which  should  be 
'conceived  and  written  only  by  transcending  the 
ordinary  notion  of  the  relations  between  the 
persons,  nevertheless  stirs  the  ordinary  emotions 
to  a  very  high  degree,  all  the  more  because  the 
language  of  the  poet,  to  those  who  have  not  the 
clew  to  it,  is  mysterious  and  bewildering  and 
therefore  worshipful.  I  divined  it  myself  before 
I  found  out  the  whole  truth  about  it." 


IV 

Some  day  in  the  far  future,  let  us  hope,  when 
the  spirit  of  Bernard  Shaw  shall  have  been 
gathered  to  the  gods,  his  popular  vogue  may  be 
an  established  fact.  Audiences  may  flock  to 
sip  wit,  philosophy,  and  humour  before  the  foot- 
lights of  the  Shaw  theatre ;  but  unless  the  as- 
semblage be  largely  composed  of  Shaw  replicas, 
of  overmen  and  overwomen  ("oversouls,"  not 
altogether  in  the  Emersonian  sense),  it  is  difficult 
to  picture  any  other  variety  listening  to  Man 
and  Superman.  For  one  thing,  it  is  not  a  play 
to  be  played,  though  it  may  be  read  with  delight 
bordering  on  despair.  A  deeper  reason  exists 
256 


THE   QUINTESSENCE  OF   SHAW 

for  its  hopelessness  —  it  is  such  a  violent  attack 
on  what  might  be  called  the  Shaw  super- 
structure, that  his  warmest  enemies  and  chilliest 
admirers  will  wonder  what  it  is  all  about.  Even 
William  Archer,  one  of  the  latter,  confessed  his 
disappointment. 

Man  and  Superman  —  odious  title — is  Shaw's 
new  attempt  at  a  Wild  Duck,  formerly  one  of 
Ibsen's  most  puzzling  productions.  Shaw  mocks 
Shaw  as  Ibsen  sneered  at  Ibsen.  This  method 
of  viewing  the  obverse  of  your  own  medal  — 
George  Meredith  would  say  the  back  of  the 
human  slate  —  is  certainly  a  revelation  of  mood- 
versatility,  though  a  disquieting  one  to  the  man 
in  the  street.  It  does  not  seem  to  be  playing 
fair  in  the  game.  Sometimes  it  is  not.  With 
Ibsen  it  was ;  he  wished  to  have  his  fling  at 
the  Ibsenite,  and  he  had  it.  Shaw-like  one  is 
tempted  to  exclaim,  Aha !  drums  and  trumpets 
again,  even  if  the  cart  be  re-painted.  (  Vide 
his  earlier  prefaces.) 

The  book  is  dedicated  to  Mr.  Arthur  Bingham 
Walkley,  who  once  wrote  of  his  friend,  "  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  fails  as  a  dramatist  because  he 
is  always  trying  to  prove  something."  In  the 
end  it  is  Shaw  the  man  who  is  more  interesting 
than  his  plays,  —  all  the  characters  are  so  many, 
—  Shaw's  winking  at  one  through  the  printed 
dialogue. 

In  the  pleasing  and  unpleasing  plays,  in  the 
puritanical  comedies,  his  "  forewords  "  were  full 
gf  meat  served  up  with  a  Hibernian  sauce,  which 
257 


ICONOCLASTS 

produced  upon  the  mental  palate  the  flavours  of 
Swift,  of  Nietzsche,  of  Aristophanes,  and  of 
Shaw.  This  compound  could  not  be  slowly  de- 
gustated,  because  the  stuff  was  too  hot.  Velocity 
is  one  of  Shaw's  prime  characteristics.  Like  a 
pianoforte  virtuoso  whose  fingers  work  faster 
than  his  feelings,  the  Irishman  is  lost  when  he 
essays  massive,  sonorous  cantilena.  He  is  as 
emotional  as  his  own  typewriter,  and  this  defect, 
which  he  parades  as  did  the  fox  in  the  fable,  has 
stood  in  the  way  of  his  writing  a  great  play. 
He  despises  love,  and  therefore  cannot  appeal 
deeply  to  mankind. 

In  the  present  preface  the  old  music  is 
sounded,  but  brassier  and  shriller ;  the  wires  arf 
wearing.  It  is  addressed  to  Arthur  Bingham 
Walkley,  by  all  odds  the  most  brilliant,  erudite, 
and  satisfying  of  English  dramatic  critics.  Now 
the  cruel  thing  about  this  preface  is  that  in  it 
the  author  tries  to  foist  upon  the  critic  of  the 
London  Times  the  penalty  attached  to  writing 
such  a  play  as  Man  and  Superman.  We  all  can- 
not be  Drydens  and  write  prefaces  as  great  as 
poems ;  and  Mr.  Shaw  might  have  left  out  either 
the  play  or  the  preface  and  spared  the  nerves  of 
his  friends.  He  started  out  to  make  a  play  on 
Don  Juan,  an  old  and  ever  youthful  theme.  He 
succeeded  in  turning  out  an  amorphous  monster, 
part  dream,  part  sermon,  that  will  haunt  its  cre- 
ator as  Frankenstein  was  haunted  for  the  rest 
of  his  days.  Man  and  Superman  is  a.  night- 
mare. 


THE    QUINTESSENCE   OF    SHAW 

To  be  impertinent  is  not  necessarily  an  evi- 
dence of  wisdom  ;  nor  does  the  dazzling  epigram 
supply  the  missing  note  of  humanity.  But  our 
author  is  above  humanity.  He  would  deal  with 
the  new  man  who  is  to  succeed  the  present  used- 
up  specimen.  We  must  freeze  up,  if  needs  be 
by  artificial  process,  all  the  springs  of  natural 
instincts.  Man  must  realize  that  in  the  inevita- 
ble duel  of  the  sexes  he  will  be  worsted  unless 
he  recognizes  that  he  is  the  pursued,  not  the 
pursuer.  In  the  animal  kingdom  it  is  the  male 
that  is  gorgeously  bedizened  for  the  purpose  of 
attracting  the  feebler  faculty  of  attention  in  the 
female.  But  in  the  human  order  the  man  is  the 
cynosure  of  the  woman.  Her  whole  education 
and  existence  is  an  effort  to  win  him  —  perhaps 
not  for  himself,  nevertheless  to  win  and  wear 
him.  This  is  biologically  correct,  though  hardly 
gallant ;  and  it  is  as  old  as  Adam  and  Eve. 
Henry  James  once  defined  the  situation  suc- 
cinctly, "  It  was  much  more  the  women  .  .  . 
who  were  after  the  men  than  the  men  who  were 
after  the  women  ;  it  was  literally  visible  that  the 
general  attitude  of  one  sex  was  that  of  the  object 
pursued  and  defensive,  apologetic  and  attenuat- 
ing. .  .  ."  (In  the  Cage.) 

Mr.  Shaw  might  have  added  that,  unlike 
lightning,  women  strike  twice  in  the  same  spot. 
Frivolity,  however,  is  not  in  Mr.  Shaw's  present 
scheme  of  applied  Unsociology. 

As  is  the  case  with  most  reformers,  he  has 
harked  back  to  the  past  for  his  future  types, 
259 


ICONOCLASTS 

His  men  and  women,  though  they  go  down  to 
the  sea  in  motor  cars,  converse  about  Ibsen, 
Nietzsche,  and  Karl  Marx,  affect  twentieth-cen- 
tury modes,  are  in  reality  as  old  as  the  hills  and 
as  savage  as  hillmen.  They  are  only  a  trifle 
more  self-conscious.  The  present  play  —  let  us 
call  it  one  for  the  sake  of  the  argument  —  deals 
with  a  precious  "  baggage  "  named  Ann  White- 
field.  She  is,  in  the  words  of  Ibsen,  "  a  mighty 
huntress  of  men."  She  is  pert,  very  vulgar, 
quite  uncivilized,  quite  ignorant  of  everyday 
feminine  delicacies ;  in  a  word,  the  new  woman, 
according  to  the  gospel  of  Shaw.  Her  pursuit 
of  a  man,  unavowed,  bold,  is  the  story  of  the 
play.  She  is  hot-footed  after  a  revolutionary 
socialist,  John  Tanner.  Every  word  that  springs 
or  saunters  from  his  lips,  every  movement  of  his 
muscular  person,  betrays  the  breed  of  Daredevil 
Dick,  of  all  the  revolutionaries  in  all  the  Shaw 
plays  —  the  true  breed  of  which  Saint  Bernard 
is  himself  the  unique  protagonist.  Tanner  is 
rich  and  believes  himself  an  anarchist.  He  is 
mistaken.  He  is  only  a  Fabianite  with  cash,  a 
Fabianite  who  has  lost  the  "  shining  face  "  of  a 
neophyte  and  talks  daggers  and  dynamite,  though 
he  uses  them  not.  Ann  has  been  left  an  orphan. 
She  is  a  new  Hedda  Gabler,  who  knows  what  she 
wants,  sees  it,  secures  it ;  therefore  she  burns  no 
dramatic  "children,"  sends  no  man  to  a  drunk- 
ard's  doom  ;  nor  will  she,  one  feels  quite  certain, 
deceive  her  husband.  To  secure  him  she  at- 
tempts all  the  deception  before  she  marries  him, 
260 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

and  if  she  seldom  succeeds  with  her  white  lies 
she  nevertheless  bags  her  game. 

To  supply  these  two  pleasing  persons  with 
characters  upon  whom  they  may  act  and  be 
reacted,  Mr.  Shaw  has  devised  a  middle-aged 
hypocrite,  a  whited  sepulchre  and  man  of  the 
world,  named  Roebuck  Ramsden ;  a  sap-headed 
young  man  who  dotes  so  much  on  Ann  that  he 
sacrifices  his  own  happiness  that  she  may  be 
happy  —  or  humbugs  himself  into  that  belief  ; 
a  self-willed  young  lady,  his  sister  Violet,  who 
conceals  her  marriage  with  evil  results  to  her 
reputation;  a  comical  low-comedy  chauffeur; 
several  pale  persons ;  a  snobbish  American 
youth  of  humble  Irish  parentage  gilded  by 
American  wealth ;  some  brigands,  a  dream  Don 
Juan,  and  last,  but  not  least,  the  Devil,  who  in 
this  case  is  not  a  gentleman. 

The  first  act  is  promising.  Mr.  Shaw's  little 
paragraphs  —  they  are  intended  as  a  prompt- 
book in  miniature  —  are  more  amusing  than  his 
preface.  We  are  deluded  into  the  notion  that  a 
first-class  comedy  is  at  hand.  There  are  all  the 
materials  ready.  Ramsden,  an  "  advanced " 
thinker  of  the  antiquated  Bradlaugh  type,  has 
been  appointed  co-executor,  co-guardian  with 
Tanner,  a  thinker  of  the  latter-day  type ;  that 
is,  a  man  who  has  read  Marx,  Proudhon, 
Nietzsche,  but  not  Max  Stirner.  The  fair  Ann, 
her  mother  and  sister  are  the  stakes  of  the 
game.  Octavius,  the  sap-headed  young  man,  is 
ready  to  sacrifice  himself,  and  his  sister  shocks 
261 


ICONOCLASTS 

all  by  not  acknowledging  the  father  of  her  un- 
born child.  Here  is  potential  stuff  for  a  tragic 
comedy.  But  Mr.  Shaw  will  not  mould  his 
material  into  viable  shapes.  He  refuses  to  be 
an  artist.  He  loathes  art  And  so  he  is  pun- 
ished by  fate  —  his  inspiration  vanishes  almost 
at  the  point  of  execution,  and,  except  for  a  few 
fugitive  flashes,  never  burns  serenely  or  continu- 
ously. 

One  telling  bit  is  when  Tanner  congratulates 
Violet  (what  an  appropriate  name !)  on  her 
delicate  condition  and  is  scorned  by  that  young 
person,  scorned  and  snubbed.  What  —  she  a 
wicked  woman !  No,  she  is  but  secretly 
wedded ;  in  the  fulness  of  time  her  husband 
will  be  revealed.  Tanner  sneaks  away,  feeling 
that  not  to  women  must  man  look  for  the  eman- 
cipation of  the  sexes  from  conventional  notions. 
There  are  long  harangues  on  prevailing  economic 
evils,  social  diseases  —  all  the  old  Shaw  griev- 
ances are  paraded. 

Act  II  is  rather  thin.  In  Act  III,  which 
recalls  a  Gilbertian  farce,  there  are  cockney 
brigands,  a  bandit  corporation,  limited,  devoted 
to  the  robbing  of  automobiles  that  pass  through 
Spain.  The  idea  is  not  sufficiently  novel  to  be 
funny.  A  lengthy  parabasis,  written  in  genuine 
Shavian,  shows  us  hell,  the  Devil,  Don  Juan, 
and  Anna  of  Mozartean  fame.  At  least  the 
talk  here  is  as  brilliant  as  is  commonly  supposed 
to  prevail  in  the  nether  regions.  Inter  alia, 
we  read  that  marriage  is  the  most  licentious 
262 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

of  human  institutions  —  hence  its  popularity. 
Even  the  Devil  is  shocked.  "  The  confusion  of 
marriage  with  morality  has  done  more  to  destroy 
the  con  science  of  the  human  race  than  any  other 
single  error."  "  Beauty,  purity,  respectability, 
religion,  art,  patriotism,  bravery,  and  the  rest  are 
nothing  but  words  which  I  or  any  one  else  can 
turn  inside  out  like  a  glove,"  continues  this  re- 
lentless rake  and  transformed  preacher.  Too 
true  ;  but  the  seamy  side  as  exhibited  by  Don 
Juan  Shaw  is  not  so  convincing  as  in  Nietzsche's 
transvaluation  of  all  values.  "  They  are  mere 
words,  useful  for  duping  barbarians  into  adopt- 
ing civilization,  or  the  civilized  poor  into  sub- 
mitting to  be  robbed  and  enslaved." 

Admitted,  keen  dissector  of  contemporary  ills ; 
but  how  about  your  play  ?  In  effect  the  author 
says  :  "  To  the  devil  with  all  art  and  plays,  my 
play  with  the  rest !  What  I  wish  to  do  is  to 
tell  you  how  to  run  the  universe  ;  and  for  this  I 
will,  if  necessary,  erect  my  pulpit  in  hell!" 

After  this  what  more  can  be  said  ?  The  play 
peters  out ;  there  is  talk,  talk,  talk.  Ann  calls 
the  poetic  temperament  "  the  old  maid's  temper- 
ament " ;  the  brigand  chief  sententiously  re- 
marks :  "  There  are  two  tragedies  in  life :  one 
is  not  to  get  your  heart's  desire  ;  the  other  is  to 
get  it" — which  sounds  as  if  wrenched  from  a 
page  of  Chamfort  or  Rivarol ;  and  Ann  con- 
cludes with  "  Go  on  talking,  Tanner,  talking ! " 
It  is  the  epitaph  of  the  piece,  dear  little  mis- 
shapen, still-born  comedy.  Well  .may  Mr. 
263 


ICONOCLASTS 

Shaw  write  "universal  laughter"  at  the  end. 
Yet  I  am  willing  to  wager  that  some  critics  will 
be  in  tears  at  this  exhibition  of  perverse  waste 
and  clever  impotency. 

The  Revolutionists'  Handbook  and  Pocket 
Companion,  which  tops  this  extraordinary  con- 
tribution, sociology  masking  as  comedy,  is  its 
chiefest  attraction.  There,  petrified  into  glis- 
tening nuggets,  may  be  found  Shaw  philoso- 
phy, Shaw  humour.  There  are  maxims,  too. 
"  Do  not  unto  others  as  you  would  that  they 
should  do  unto  you.  Their  tastes  may  not  be 
the  same."  This  smacks  of  the  inverted  wisdom 
of  the  late  James  Whistler.  Marriage,  crime,  pun- 
ishment, the  beating  of  children,  title,  honours, 
property,  servants,  religion,  virtues,  vices  — 
everything  of  vital  import  to  thinking  men  and 
women  is  regarded  with  the  charmingly  malevo- 
lent eye  of  Shaw.  He  exclaims :  "  Property, 
said  Proudhon,  is  theft.  This  is  the  only  per- 
fect truism  that  has  been  uttered  on  the  subject." 
Come,  come,  Bernard  Shaw !  Proudhon  said  it, 
but  the  speech  was  not  his  own  property.  You, 
who  know  your  social  classics  so  well,  should 
have  remembered  Brissot's  Philosophical  Exam- 
ination of  Property  and  Theft,  only  published 
in  1 780  !  You  also  say,  "  Beware  the  man 
whose  God  is  in  the  skies,"  and  "  Every  man 
over  forty  is  a  scoundrel."  Tut,  tut !  Why  not 
add  —  all  girls  over  fifty  should  be  drowned  ?  It 
is  just  as  logical.  But  can  one  condense  the 
cosmos  in  a  formula  ? 

264 


THE    QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

The  general  impression  of  the  book  causes  us 
to  believe  there  is  a  rift  in  the  writer's  lute ;  not 
in  his  mentality,  but  in  his  own  beliefs,  or  scep- 
ticisms. Perhaps  Shaw  no  longer  pins  his  faith 
to  Shaw.  Ibsen  asserts  that  after  twenty  years 
a  truth  that  has  outlived  its  usefulness  is  no 
longer  truth,  but  the  simulacrum  of  one.  'Shaw's 
truths  may  be  decaying.  We  feel  sure  that  if 
they  be,  he  will  be  the  first  to  detect  the  odour 
and  warn  away  his  public.  Some  years  ago  he 
printed  a  pamphlet  against  anarchy  and  anar- 
chist, which  was  to  be  expected  from  a  mild, 
frugivorous  man.  Now  he  seems  to  be  weary- 
ing of  the  milk-white  flag  of  socialism;  and  yet 
his  revolutionary  maxims  are  maxims  for  children 
in  the  time  of  teething.  The  world  has  moved 
since  the  Fabian  society  scowled  at  the  British 
lion  and  tried  to  twist  its  tail  with  the  dialectics 
of  moderate  socialism.  To  use  Mr.  Shaw's  own 
pregnant  remark,  "  Moderation  is  never  ap- 
plauded for  its  own  sake  "  ;  and  :  "  He  who  can, 
does.  He  who  cannot,  teaches."  Fabianism 
taught,  taught  moderation  !  Yet  to-day  the 
real  thing  is  not  Elisee  Reclus,  but  Michael 
Bakounin ;  not  Peter  Kropotkin,  but  Sergei 
Netschajew ;  not  Richard  Wagner,  but  his 
friend,  Roeckel,  who  was  sent  by  him  across 
the  cannon-shattered  barricades  at  Dresden  in 
1849  to  fetch  an  ice  to  the  thirsty  composer. 
Wagner  rang  the  alarm  bells  on  this  opera 
bouffe  and  escaped  to  Switzerland,  Bakounin 
and  Roeckel  remained  and  went  to  prison ! 
265 


ICONOCLASTS 

Shaw  is  still  ringing  alarm  bells,  but  somehow 
or  other  their  music  is  missing  and  carries  no 
message  to  his  listeners.  Is  it  possible  that  he 
regrets  the  anarchy  that  he  has  never  had  the 
courage  to  embrace  and  avow  ?  A  born  anarchist, 
individualist,  revolutionist,  he  has  always  gone 
in  for  half-hearted  measures  of  reform.  Never, 
like  Bakounin,  has  he  applied  the  torch,  thrown 
the  bomb  ;  never,  like  Netschajew,  has  he  dared 
to  pen  a  catechism  of  destruction,  a  manual  of 
nihilism  so  terrific  that  advanced  Russian  think- 
ers shudder  if  you  mention  its  title.  It  is  even 
rumoured  that  the  Irish  dramatist  serves  his 
parish  as  a  meek  citizen  should  —  he  will  be 
writing  poetry  or  melodrama  next.  His  pessi- 
mism is  temperamental,  not  philosophical,  like 
that  of  most  pessimists,  as  James  Sully  has 
pointed  out.  And  instead  of  closely  observing  hu- 
manity, after  the  manner  of  all  great  dramatists, 
he  has  only  closely  studied  Bernard  Shaw. 

"  Regarded  as  a  play,  Man  and  Superman  is,  I 
repeat,  primitive  in  invention  and  second  rate  in 
execution.  The  most  disheartening  thing  about 
it  is  that  it  contains  not  one  of  those  scenes  of 
really  tense  dramatic  quality  which  redeemed 
the  squalor  of  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession,  and 
made  of  Candida  something  very  like  a  master- 
piece." Thus  William  Archer. 


Most  modestly  Mr.  Shaw  entitles  a  farce  of 
his,  the  celebrated  drama  in  two  tableaux  and 
266 


THE   QUINTESSENCE   OF   SHAW 

in  blank  verse,  —  The  Admirable  Bashville,  or 
Constancy  Unrewarded.  It  is  nothing  else  but 
the  story  of  Cashel  Byron's  Profession  put  into 
blank  verse,  because,  as  Mr.  Shaw  says,  blank 
verse  is  so  much  easier  to  write  than  good  prose. 
It  is  printed  at  the  end  of  the  second  edition  of  the 
prize-fighting  novel.  As  there  has  been  a  drama- 
tization made  —  unauthorized  —  for  a  well-known 
American  pugilist-actor,  Mr.  Shaw  thought  that 
he  had  better  protect  his  English  interests.  Hence 
the  parody  for  copyright  purposes  which  was  pro- 
duced in  London  the  summer  of  1903  by  the 
Stage  Society  at  the  Imperial  Theatre.  It  is 
funny.  It  gibes  at  Shakespeare,  at  the  modern 
drama,  at  Parliament,  at  social  snobbery,  at  Shaw 
himself,  and  almost  everything  else  within  reach. 
The  stage  setting  was  a  mockery  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan stage,  with  two  venerable  beef-eaters  in 
Tower  costume,  who  hung  up  placards  bearing 
the  legend,  "  A  Glade  in  Wiltstoken  Park,"  etc. 
Ben  Webster  as  Cashel  Byron  and  James  Hearn 
as  the  Zulu  King  carried  off  the  honours.  Au- 
brey Smith,  made  up  as  Mr.  Shaw  in  the  costume 
of  a  policeman  with  a  brogue,  caused  merriment, 
especially  at  the  close,  when  he  informed  his 
audience  that  the  author  had  left  the  house. 
And  so  he  had.  He  was  standing  at  the  corner 
when  I  accosted  him.  Our  interview  was  brief. 
He  warned  me  in  grave  accents  and  a  twin- 
kling Celtic  eye  never  again  to  describe  him 
as  "benevolent."  Half  the  beggars  of  London 
had  winded  the  phrase  and  were  pestering  him 
267 


ICONOCLASTS 

at  his  back  gate.  Mr.  Shaw  still  looks  as  if  a 
half-raw  beefsteak  and  a  mug  of  Bass  would  do 
him  a  world  of  good.  But  who  can  tell  ?  He 
might  then  lose  some  of  his  effervescence  —  that 
quality  of  humour  so  happily  described  by  Ed- 
mund Gosse  when  he  spoke  of  the  vegetable 
spirits  of  George  Bernard  Shaw. 

The  new  play,  John  Bull's  Other  Island,  was 
first  played  in  London  by  the  Stage  Society  last 
November.  It  is  said  —  by  Shaw's  warmest 
enemies  —  to  be  witty,  entertaining,  and  dra- 
matically boneless.  There  is  no  alternative 
now  for  Mr.  Shaw  —  he  must  visit  America, 
lecture,  and  become  rich.  It  is  the  logical  con- 
clusion of  his  impromptu  career,  for  it  was  first 
in  America  that  the  Shaw  books  and  plays  were 
successful  and  appreciated;  the  plays  largely 
because  of  the  bold  efforts  of  Arnold  Daly  and 
Winchell  Smith,  two  young  dramatic  revolution- 
ists. And  Mr.  Shaw  may  rediscover  America 
for  the  Americans! 


268 


VII 
MAXIM   GORKY'S   NACHTASYL 

DE  profundt s  ad  te  clamavi  ! 

After  witnessing  a  performance  of  Maxim 
Gorky's  Nachtasyl  —  The  Night  Refuge  is  a 
fair  equivalent  in  English  —  one  realizes,  not 
without  a  shudder,  that  there  are  depths  within 
depths,  abysms  beneath  abysms,  still  unexplored 
by  the  dramatic  adventurer.  The  late  Emile 
Zola  posed  all  his  lifetime  as  the  father  of 
naturalism  in  literature ;  but  he  might  have 
gone  to  school  to  learn  the  alphabet  of  his  art 
at  the  knees  of  the  young  man  from  Nijni  Nov- 
gorod, Maxim  Gorky.  That  anarchist  of  letters 
has  taught  us  lessons  of  the  bitterest  import, 
Gorky  the  Bitter  One.  We  know  now  that 
Zola  was  only  masquerading  in  the  gorgeous 
rags  of  romanticism  with  a  vocabulary  borrowed 
from  Chateaubriand,  Victor  Hugo,  and  Flaubert ; 
we  know,  too,  that  despite  the  argot  of  L'Assom- 
moir,  the  book  is  as  romantic  as  a  Bouguereau 
canvas  —  the  formula  is  the  same  :  highly  glazed 
surfaces,  smug  sentiment,  and  pretty  colouring. 
The  difference  is  that  while  Zola  painted  low 
life  like  a  born  romantic,  Bouguereau  selected 
for  his  subjects  the  nymphs  so  dear  to  the  lover 
269 


ICONOCLASTS 

of  classic  anthologies.  To  the  night  of  his  un« 
fortunate  death  Zola  believed  himself  a  natu- 
ralist, though  his  books  never  escape  the  taint 
of  melodrama. 

The  naturalism  of  the  Russians  is  in  a  differ- 
ent key.  Gogol,  the  inimitable  Gogol,  wrote 
Dead  Souls,  and  Russia  had  conquered  the 
kingdom  once  ruled  by  Fielding.  If  Chateau- 
briand was  the  father  of  modern  French  prose, 
as  Goethe  asserted,  from  Gogol  stemmed  all  the 
great  modern  Russians :  Dostoievsky,  Turgenev, 
Stchendrin,  Tolstoy,  Gorky ;  and  the  last  seems 
nearer  the  first  than  either  Turgenev  or  Tolstoy. 
He  is  hardly  ten  years  old  artistically,  yet'  his 
name  is  known  from  Siberia  to  the  Sandwich 
Islands.  He  is  read  more  in  a  day  than  Kipling 
is  in  a  year,  and,  compared  to  Kipling,  he  is  as 
flint  to  chalk,  a  man  carved  from  the  hardest 
granite. 

A  revolutionary,  inasmuch  as  he  deliberately 
disowns,  in  his  most  characteristic  work,  all 
the  devices  of  literature,  of  rhetoric,  of  literary 
architecture,  he  is  at  his  worst  in  prolonged 
narrative,  such  as  Foma  Gordyeeff.  And 
when  he  philosophizes  he  is  long-winded.  It 
is  in  the  short  tale  with  a  simple  setting  that 
Gorky  knows  how  to  stir  us.  A  strip  of  sea 
beach,  the  sky  a  hot  azure,  the  water  green  as 
grass,  two  or  three  men  and  women,  and  we  are 
given  a  tragedy  in  miniature.  Or  the  steppes, 
sullen  and  brown,  stretch  betore  us  10  rne  setting 
sun ;  a  few  tramps  talk  at  random,  night  falls. 
270 


MAXIM   GORKY'S   NACHTASYL 

Misery  huddles  close.  We  have  felt  the  very 
pulse-beat  of  life  —  and  such  lives  !  A  wretched 
outcast,  starved,  wet  as  a  dog  in  the  rain — for  he 
is  but  a  dog  in  the  rain  —  meets  a  woman  as  mis- 
erable and  as  degraded  as  himself.  They  man- 
age to  steal  some  mouldy  bread,  and  sleep  one 
night  in  a  cask.  It  is  but  the  recital  of  one  night. 
They  drift  apart  in  the  morning,  never  to  meet 
again.  Why  should  they  care  ?  Drab  and 
monotonous,  their  soiled  lives  need  be  viewed 
but  for  a  moment  to  surmise  their  future.  Yet 
Gorky  —  for  he  is  his  own  hero  —  contrives 
to  sound  undertones  in  this  dark  music  that 
appeal.  Instinctively  he  lays  bare  the  souls 
of  the  men  and  women  he  dissects  —  souls  as  of 
muddy  flame.  A  dreary  sigh  escapes  their  lips 
as  they  drag  their  poor  carcases  from  place  to 
place.  Life  has  drugged  them  with  sorrow. 
Why  move  at  all?  Why  live  at  all  ?  Why  were 
they  born  ?  Why  do  they  die  ?  Existence  is  re- 
duced to  a  few  primary  movements  ;  eat,  sleep ;  if 
vodka  can  be  secured,  then  drink  it  to  oblivion, 
for  the  sole  blessing  in  this  vale  of  tears  is 
oblivion. 

It  may  be  seen  that,  compared  to  Gorky's 
rank,  unsavoury,  but  sincere  notation  of  facts, 
Thomas  de  Quincey's  charming  narrative  of  his 
youthful  woes  in  Oxford  Street  —  that  "  stony- 
hearted mother "  —  and  his  walks  and  talks 
with  Anne,  the  noctambulist,  is  an  idyll.  Gorky 
transfers  to  his  pages  the  odours  of  a  starving, 
sweatmg  humanity,  its  drunkenness,  its.  explo- 
271 


ICONOCLASTS 

sions  of  rage,  guttural  cries  of  joy,  and  its  all  too 
terrible  animalism.  We  turn  our  heads  the  other 
way  when  his  women  curse  and  rave.  Walt 
Whitman,  said  Moncure  Conway,  brought  the 
slop  pail  into  the  drawing-room ;  but  for  Gorky 
there  is  no  drawing-room.  Life  is  only  a  dung 
heap. 

For  years  I  have  searched  for  the  last  word  in 
dramatic  naturalism,  and  in  Gorky's  Nachtasyl  I 
found  it.  I  heard  it  first  in  Berlin  at  the  Kleines 
Theatre,  and  later  in  Vienna  at  the  Deutsches 
Volkstheatre.  Gorky,  himself  a  lycanthrope, 
pessimist,  despiser  of  his  fellow-men,  has  as- 
sembled in  this  almost  indescribable  and  un- 
speakable melange  —  for  it  is  not  a  play  —  a 
set  of  men  and  women  whose  very  lives  smell 
to  heaven ;  the  setting  recalls  one  of  his  stories, 
Men  with  Pasts.  (It  is  in  Orloff  and  his 
Wife.) 

An  utter  absence  of  theatricalism  and  a 
naifvete^  in  dramatic  feeling  proclaim  Gorky  a 
man  of  genius  and  also  one  quite  ignorant  of 
the  fundamental  rules  of  the  theatre.  His  four 
acts  might  be  compressed  into  two,  or,  better 
still,  into  one.  Only  the  fatigue  and  gloom  en- 
gendered would  interfere  with  this  scheme,  for 
there  is  far  too  much  talk,  far  too  little  move- 
ment. Gorky,  like  many  uneducated  men  of 
power,  loves  to  moralize,  to  discuss  life  and  its 
meanings.  He  is  at  times  veritably  sophomoric 
in  this  respect.  Long  speeches  are  put  into  the 
mouths  of  his  characters,  who  forthwith  spout 
272 


MAXIM    GORKY'S   NACHTASYL 

the  most  dreary  commonplaces  about  destiny, 
luck,  birth,  and  death. 

The  strength  of  the  play  lies  in  its  presenta- 
tion of  character.  Characterization,  with  a  slen- 
der thread  of  narrative,  no  effective  "curtains," 
comprises  the  material  of  this  vivid  experiment. 
Nevertheless,  it  burns  the  memory  because  of 
its  shocking  candour  and  pity-breeding  truths. 

One  is  struck  by  a  certain  resemblance  to 
Charles  Dickens  in  all  the  novels  of  the  Rus- 
sians, Dostoievsky  and  Gorky  in  particular. 
There  are  whole  passages  in  Crime  and  Chastise- 
ment and  Injury  and  Insult  that  might  have  been 
suggested  by  the  English  master  of  fiction. 
Gorky,  like  Gogol,  loves  to  picture  some  poor 
wretch  with  a  dominant  passion,  and  then  to 
place  him  in  surroundings  that  will  move  the 
machinery  of  his  being.  And  with  all  his  hatred 
of  life,  of  men,  pity  oozes  from  his  pages, 
sometimes  contemptuous,  sometimes  passionate, 
pity.  The  Night  Refuge  is  a  cellar  with  a 
kitchen,  a  few  holes  in  the  wall  for  sleeping  pur- 
poses. Its  counterpart  exists  in  every  great  city. 
Thieves,  prostitutes,  men  and  women,  the  very 
dregs  of  life,  pass  their  battered  days  and  nights 
in  these  foul  caves.  Gorky  confesses  to  having 
lived  in  such  places  while  he  wandered  through 
some  of  the  Russian  towns.  Anarchists  are  not, 
as  is  popularly  supposed,  born  or  bred  in  these 
pest  alleys,  whose  inhabitants  are  too  degraded, 
too  worn  out,  to  harbour  plans  for  the  overthrow 
of  governments.  The  vermin  that  burrow  in  the 
2/3 


ICONOCLASTS 

mud  and  darkness  are  not  dangerously  brave  or 
endowed  with  destructive  energies. 

The  keepers  of  the  night  asylum  are  a  man 
and  wife,  a  trifle  better  off  than  their  lodgers 
in  physique,  for  they  are  not  drunkards.  The 
husband  is  past  fifty,  an  avaricious,  snuffling, 
shuffling  hypocrite,  jealous  of  his  young  wife 
and  brutal  to  the  people  he  harbours.  His  wife 
is  only  twenty-six  and  hates  her  husband.  She 
loves  a  young,  good-looking  thief  who  lives  in 
the  cellar,  an  aristocrat  among  his  fellows,  for 
he  sleeps  alone  in  a  sort  of  cupboard,  and  only 
works  at  his  "  profession "  when  he  needs 
money.  He  gets  the  hottest  tea  and  the  nicest 
morsels  from  the  shrewish  woman.  Her  voice, 
raucous  and  full  of  fury,  is  softened  when  she 
addresses  her  Wasjka.  His  companions  know 
all  about  this  affair,  but  are  not  jealous  of  him; 
they  are  too  indifferent  to  everything  but  their 
own  wants  to  care  for  God  or  man,  devils  or 
angels.  They  are  over-tramps,  beings  for 
whom  the  moralities,  major  and  minor,  no 
longer  have  any  meaning.  The  thief  is  tired 
of  the  woman,  tired  of  his  life  amid  stupid  peo- 
ple, and  has  cast  his  eyes  on  Natascha,  the  sister 
of  his  mistress.  The  elder  woman  realizes  it 
and  trouble  is  brewing  when  the  curtain  goes 
up. 

It  is  morning.  A  dull  light  filters  from  above 
on  a  mass  of  almost  shapeless  figures.  One  by 
one  they  stir.  Yawns,  half-stifled  oaths,  cough- 
ing, expectorations,  noses  noisily  blown,  whinings, 
274 


MAXIM    GORKY'S    NACHTASYL 

cries  of  pain,  harsh  laughter,  and  suppressed 
sobbing  —  the  hideous  symphony  of  life  at  its 
lowest  social  ebb.  Again  you  feel  like  averting 
your  head,  for  such  is  the  force  of  suggestion 
that  a  noisome  odour  seems  to  emanate  from  the 
stage  and  creep  languidly  through  the  audi- 
torium. 

The  other  dramatis  persona:  a  policeman, 
uncle  to  the  sisters ;  a  locksmith  with  a  dying 
wife  —  dying  of  consumption  brought  on  by  the 
prolonged  beatings  at  the  hands  of  her  semi- 
insane  husband;  a  street-walker  —  one  who 
reads  sentimental  novels  and  speaks  at  intervals 
of  a  romance  she  had  when  younger ;  a  huck- 
stress,  cynical,  drunken,  loud-mouthed  ;  a  cap- 
maker who  never  works ;  an  actor  who  has 
forgotten  his  professional  name,  poisoned  with 
alcohol ;  a  man  named  Satin,  a  good-natured, 
degenerate  scoundrel ;  a  decayed  baron,  neuras- 
thenic, and  with  a  face  that  recalls  one  of  Dore's 
sketches  of  a  damned  soul —  lean,  always  biting 
his  nails,  stuttering,  his  eyes  blazing  with  the 
infernal  fires  of  vodka  madness  ;  an  old  man  of 
venerable  aspect,  a  pilgrim  who  happens  in ; 
his  name  is  Luka  and  he  is  some  sixty  years  of 
age.  Then  there  is  a  young  scapegrace  shoe- 
maker who  plays  the  concertina  and  always 
describes  himself  as  a  free  man,  a  man  without 
cares,  a  man  who  would  not  accept  wealth  if 
offered  him.  A  Tartar  and  several  porters  and 
members  of  the  barefoot  brigade  make  up  this 
unattractive  company. 

275 


ICONOCLASTS 

How  to  weave  a  play  from  such  unprom- 
ising material  must  have  puzzled  Gorky.  Evi- 
dently he  did  not  try,  preferring  the  easier  way 
of  letting  his  people  tell  their  own  stories  and 
reducing  technical  construction  to  a  mere  drop- 
ping of  the  curtain  from  time  to  time.  In  fact, 
there  is  far  more  dramatic  intrigue  in  Tolstoy's 
Powers  of  Darkness,  of  which  this  piece  is  really 
a  pendant.  Gorky  does  not  fear  the  naked 
truth  as  do  many  literary  artists  who  have 
social  position  and  reputations  to  maintain. 

The  collision  of  character  which  is  essential 
to  the  production  of  drama  is  brought  about 
somehow  or  other,  the  chief  means  employed 
being  Luka  the  pilgrim.  This  old  man,  who  is 
as  loquacious  as  Polonius  and  almost  as  platitu- 
dinous, changes  the  ideas  of  every  one  he  meets. 
He  finds  the  thief  hard  and  impenitent;  he  points 
out  to  him  that  in  Siberia,  over  yonder,  is  a  wide, 
free  land,  where  every  man  may  hew  a  way  for 
himself.  The  good-looking  scamp  tells  him  that 
thief  he  was  born,  thief  he  must  remain ;  that 
his  father  saw  the  inside  of  prisons ;  that  if  he 
goes  to  Siberia  it  will  be  as  a  convict,  and  not  of 
his  own  volition.  Yet  the  words  of  the  stranger 
have  sunk  a  shaft  into  his  consciousness,  and 
despite  his  mockery  of  the  old  man's  belief  he 
pauses  and  reflects — why  not  ?  Why  not  become 
a  decent  man,  marry,  beget  children,  and  chuck 
the  old  life  of  crime  and  police  espionage? 
He  loves  Natascha.  He  hates  her  sister,  and 
in  the  best  scene  of  the  play  he  lays  his  case 
276 


MAXIM    GORKY'S    NACHTASYL 

clumsily  but  manfully  before  the  girl.  The 
crossroads  of  his  life  are  arrived  at  —  her  deci- 
sion will  settle  which  turn  he  is  to  take. 

Natascha  is  that  mixture  of  good,  bad,  and 
indifferent  in  all  of  us,  and  is  therefore  a  puzzle 
to  audiences  who  like  patterns  made  out  of  the 
whole  cloth,  without  any  dubious  mixture  of 
light  and  shade.  She  realizes  that  Wasjka  has 
been  her  sister's  lover ;  she  has  been  beaten  so 
that  her  face  and  shoulders  are  often  black  and 
blue  by  her  jealous  sister ;  she  knows  that  her 
present  life  is  a  hell — yet  she  hesitates;  Luka 
urges  her.  Wasjka  pleads.  Unluckily,  the 
sister  returns  home  earlier  than  expected  and 
from  a  window  overlooking  the  cellar  up  one 
short  flight  of  stairs  she  overhears  the  entire 
conversation.  Here  is  coincidence  childishly 
introduced  to  unravel  the  simplest  of  dramatic 
knots.  Yet  it  seems  inevitable.  The  sister  is 
an  envious,  prying  woman,  always  spying  upon 
her  boarders.  She  may  have  hastened  her  de- 
votions at  church  —  like  her  husband,  she  is 
bigoted  and  hypocritical — and  quietly  sneaked 
in  to  see  what  mischief  her  disreputable  crew  of 
lodgers  were  making.  Pictorially  the  scene  is 
striking.  It  recalls  any  one  of  the  numerous 
kitchen  pieces  of  Teniers  or  Ostade,  in  which  a 
stout  wench  is  courted,  while  from  some  aperture 
above  a  jealous  wife  threateningly  peers.  At 
the  crucial  moment  in  the  play  the  angry  crea- 
ture breaks  out  into  a  volley  of  abuse.  A  pretty 
state  of  affairs !  Such  goings-on  in  a  respec- 
277 


ICONOCLASTS 

table  establishment  if  her  back  is  turned  for  a 
half  hour!  A  body  can't  go  to  church  to  pray 
for  the  sins  of  her  neighbours  without  meddle- 
some old  men  entering  unbidden  a  decent  house 
and  setting  every  one  by  the  ears ! 

After  she  empties  one  vial  of  wrath  upon 
Luka's  head  she  uncorks  another  for  her  unfor- 
tunate sister's  benefit.  A  lazy  good-for-nothing, 
living  on  the  bread  of  her  relatives  —  a  fine 
marriage  she  will  make  with  a  thief :  a  honey- 
moon in  jail,  perhaps!  The  husband  puts  in 
.nasty  remarks,  and  Wasjka  loses  his  temper. 
There  is  a  short,  sharp  interchange  of  blows, 
but  the  men  are  torn  asunder.  Hush!  the  police 
are  always  lurking  near  by,  and  not  even  the 
uncle,  himself  a  member  of  the  force,  a  bribe- 
taker, gambler,  and  drunkard,  could  intervene 
where  blood  had  been  shed.  But  Wasjka's 
chance  had  passed.  It  does  not  return.  Natas- 
cha,  cowed,  humbly  goes  upstairs  to  the  kitchen, 
there  to  clean  the  samovar,  and  the  aged  Luka 
groans,  for  he  knows  what  life  is,  with  its  queer 
eddies  and  whirlpools  of  chance. 

He  has  comforted  the  dying  wife  of  the  lock- 
smith, Anna  by  name,  and,  with  all  the  ribaldry, 
drunkenness,  and  profanity  around  them,  whis- 
pers in  her  ears  consoling  words.  She  has 
known  naught  but  misery,  starvation,  cold,  and 
blows  her  life  long.  Her  brutal  husband  is 
presented  as  the  type  of  the  workman  who  is  al- 
ways preaching  of  the  dignity  of  labour.  He  is 
a  workman,  he  proudly  asserts  to  the  thief,  and 
278 


MAXIM    GORKY'S   NACHTASYL 

files  away  at  his  locks  while  his  wife  lies  gasp- 
ing. We  catch  a  strain  of  Tolstoy  in  the  retort 
of  the  thief,  who  tells  him  that  work  alone 
doesn't  make  a  man.  Thick  of  apprehension, 
the  huge  dolt  sits  and  files.  When  his  wife 
begs  for  more  air,  he  tells  her  to  go  to  the  yard  — 
the  place  is  already  too  cold.  Then  he  moves 
over  to  her  and  offers  her  some  bread.  He  even 
asks  if  she  suffers.  Finally,  with  the  others,  he 
departs  for  the  tavern.  As  she  listens  to  Luka's 
words,  Wasjka  enters  and  laughs  them  to  scorn. 
Is  there  a  God  ?  The  company,  which  has  re- 
turned, discusses  violently  this  question.  Talk, 
talk,  talk  —  the  Russian  tramp  will  talk  all  day 
if  you  give  him  a  theme  and  a  drink.  If  one 
believes  in  a  God,  interposes  Luka,  then  God 
exists;  if  one  does  not,  then  there  is  no  God. 
It  is  a  neat  metaphysical  evasion,  but  the  others 
are  momentarily  silenced.  Wasjka  has  boasted 
that  he  fears  neither  life  nor  death.  Anna 
quietly  dies  while  the  rest  are  gabbling,  and 
instantly  a  hush  pervades  the  sordid  scene. 
Dead!  What  does  that  mean?  A  moment 
ago  querulously  begging  for  quiet — now  quiet 
forever  !  The  young  criminal  edges  his  way  up- 
stairs, his  bragging  spirit  clean  gone.  Dead ! 
Some  one  must  run  to  the  tavern  and  tell  the 
husband.  The  police  must  be  informed;  the 
sooner  the  better  for  the  man's  sake.  He  might 
be  suspected!  The  curtain  falls  on  a  moving 
spectacle. 

Another  case  in  which  Luka  interferes  is  that 
279 


ICONOCLASTS 

of  the  old  actor.  We  gather  from  this  abject 
wreck's  disconnected  speeches  that  he  has  been 
a  dramatic  artist  in  his  time ;  but,  as  he  repeats, 
parrot-fashion,  he  "  has  poisoned  his  organism 
with  alcohol."  He  picked  up  the  phrase  from 
the  doctor  at  the  poorhouse  infirmary.  This 
caricature  of  humanity,  this  wraith  with  a  brill- 
iant past,  has  drifted  into  the  back  waters  of 
the  night  refuge  and  there  awaits  death.  One 
gleam  of  light  he  is  made  to  see  before  the  end. 
Luka  tells  him  of  a  city  which  contains  a  hospital 
for  the  cure  of  drunkenness.  There  must  the 
actor  go  and  there  begin  a  new  life.  A  new 
life!  The  words  ravish  his  ears  stunned  by 
debauchery  and  wake  a  momentary  vista  of 
hope.  Where  is  this  city?  Luka  cannot  tell. 
He  has  forgotten,  but  he  will  surely  remember. 
The  actor  later  relates  to  the  cynical  street-walker 
the  good  news.  His  brain  stimulated  by  the  in- 
trusion of  a  new  idea  stirs  to  life.  He  quotes, 
misquotes,  Shakespeare;  recalls  bits  of  Lear, 
and  breaks  down  in  recitation.  The  word,  the 
word  —  what  is  it  ?  Exalted  he  waves  his  arms 
wildly  and  rushes  out  to  the  haven  of  rest,  the 
tavern.  When  the  dead  woman  is  surrounded 
by  the  speechless  crowd,  the  old  actor  comes  in, 
mounts  a  table,  and  declaims  his  speech.  He 
has  remembered.  The  effect  is  ghastly. 

Luka  has  conversations  with  the  baron.     This 

odd  bundle  of  bones  lives  on  the  young  woman 

already  mentioned.      If  he  can't  get  vodka,  he 

will  drink  drugs ;    these  failing  he  will  sit  and 

280 


MAXIM    GORKY'S    NACHTASYL 

gnaw  his  nails  as  a  mouse  gnaws  the  wires  of  its 
cage,  or  he  will  sit  cross-legged  for  hours  on  the 
top  of  the  Russian  stove  and  listen  to  story-tell- 
ing. His  catchword  is  "  talk  on  "  ;  anything  for 
an  anecdote.  He  mocks  continually  the  woman 
who  supports  him.  She  is  an  inveterate  senti- 
mentalist, and  every  day  tells  a  story  about  a 
student  of  noble  birth  who  once  threatened  to 
shoot  himself  for  love  of  her.  But,  as  the  baron 
sarcastically  points  out,  the  name  of  this  imagi- 
nary hero  is  Gaston  one  day,  another  it  is  Raoul. 
He  taunts  the  poor  devil  into  despair  and  drunk- 
enness. Luka  expostulates.  He  touches  the 
spring  that  sets  working  the  young  man's  recol- 
lections of  a  happy  and  honourable  past.  He 
was  the  son  of  a  wealthy,  noble  family.  He  had 
his  coffee  in  bed  in  the  morning  —  yes,  it  is  true  ! 
He  had  servants,  horses,  a  wife.  Why  was  he 
born  ?  No  idea  !  Why  did  he  marry  ?  No  idea  ! 
Why  is  he  still  living  ?  No  idea !  Why  will  he 
die? 

Then  the  woman  has  her  revenge.  It  is  her 
chance,  and  she  takes  it.  She  sneers  at  the 
baron's  lies.  He  take  his  coffee  in  bed  !  Not 
he.  Liar  he  is  when  he  boasts  of  his  birth. 
Vagabond!  The  episode  is  as  ugly  as  if  it 
happened  under  our  eyes.  His  secret  weak- 
ness exposed,  the  baron  breaks  into  hysterical 
weeping,  which  presently  modulates  into  fierce 
anger.  Seizing  a  glass,  he  attempts  to  hurl  it 
at  her  head.  But  the  storm  subsides,  and  soon 
they  are  all  drinking  and  shouting.  You  feel  as 
281 


ICONOCLASTS 

if  you  had  been  viewing  the  scene  from  a  hidden 
window,  so  realistic  is  the  performance  by  the 
troupe  of  the  Kleines  Theatre. 

The  climax  is  attained  in  the  third  act.  A 
row  is  precipitated  during  which  the  lodging- 
house  keeper  is  killed.  Who  struck  the  blow  ? 
Loudly  his  widow  denounces  Wasjka.  He  is 
the  murderer  of  her  husband,  he  the  thief  who 
threatened  so  often  the  life  of  her  good  man.  In 
the  confusion  the  police  rush  in,  Wasjka  is  man- 
acled ;  but  so  is  the  woman,  for  Natascha  bears 
witness  that  she  overheard  her  sister  plotting  the 
death  of  her  husband  with  her  lover,  Wasjka. 
The  moment  is  as  theatrically  thrilling  as  you 
please ;  hate  has  the  upper  hand  in  Natascha's 
heart  and  her  evidence  sends  the  pair  to  prison. 
She  disappears. 

About  this  time  you  begin  to  suspect  that  the 
well-meaning  Luka  is  a  trouble-breeder.  Every 
pie  in  which  he  has  put  his  finger  so  far  is  spoiled. 
He,  too,  vanishes  as  noiselessly  as  he  appeared. 
In  Act  IV  what  is  left  of  the  gang  sits  at  the 
same  old  dingy  table  drinking  and  discussing, 
interminably  discussing,  the  events  of  the  past, 
and  also  Luka.  He  is  branded  as  a  liar,  a  bore, 
a  kill-joy,  a  busybody,  and  one  who  causes  trouble. 
What  if  he  lies  or  tells  the  truth  ?  What's  the 
difference,  anyhow  ?  His  truth  caused  murder, 
his  lies  did  no  one  good,  and  so  they  sneer,  sneer 
at  the  world,  sneer  at  themselves,  occasionally, 
Pilate-like,  asking,  what  is  truth?  The  Tartar 
prays  in  a  corner  and  reads  his  Koran,  the  rest 


MAXIM  GORKY'S  NACHTASYL 

yell  out  a  drunken  song,  the  shoemaker  plays 
his  concertina.  The  old  actor,  worse  sot  than 
ever,  asks  the  Tartar  to  pray  for  him,  goes  out 
to  the  yard,  and  hangs  himself.  The  baron  dis- 
covers the  swinging  body  and  announces  the 
fact  to  his  comrades.  One  answers  wrathfully, 
"So  he  must  spoil  our  singing  —  the  fool!" 
And  with  that  the  curtain  drops,  leaving  you 
puzzled,  disgusted,  shocked,  yet  touched.  Gorky 
has  caught  something  of  "  the  strange,  irregular 
rhythm  of  life  "  in  this  piece,  and  you  feel  the 
vibration  of  truth  in  every  line  of  the  extremely 
plastic  dialogue.  That  the  stage  has,  or  has  not, 
any  business  with  such  spectacles  never  occurs  to 
the  spectator  until  out  upon  Berlin's  broad  avenue 
of  trees  pulsing  with  life. 

The  amateur  of  sensations,  exquisite,  morbid, 
or  brutal,  must  feel  after  Nachtasyl  that  the  bot- 
tomless pit  has  been  almost  plumbed.  What 
further  exploitation  of  woe,  of  crime,  of  hu- 
manity stripped  of  its  adventitious  social  trap- 
pings, can  be  made  ?  And  this  question  is  put 
by  every  generation  without  in  the  least  stop- 
ping the  fresh  shaking  up  of  the  dramatic  kalei- 
doscope. The  Gorky  play,  even  if  it  disgusts 
at  times,  at  least  arouses  pity  and  terror,  and 
thus,  according  to  the  classical  formula,  purges 
the  minds  of  its  spectators.  Compared  to  the 
drama  of  lubricity  manufactured  in  Paris  and 
annually  exported  to  America,  this  little  study 
of  a  group  of  outcast  men  and  women  is  a 
powerful  moral  lesson.  That  it  is  a  play  I  do 
283 


ICONOCLASTS 

not  assert,  nor  could  it  be  put  on  the  boards 
in  America  without  a  storm  of  critical  and  pub- 
lic censure.  Americans  go  to  the  theatre  to  be 
amused  and  not  to  have  their  nerves  assaulted. 
Thackeray,  in  a  memorable  passage  of  Vanity 
Fair,  refused  to  stir  those  depths  of  humanity 
where  lurk  all  manners  of  evil  monsters.  Per- 
haps this  refusal  was  for  the  great  writer  an 
artistic  renunciation ;  perhaps  he  knew  the  Brit- 
ish public.  In  our  own  happy,  sun-smitten  land, 
where  poverty  and  vice  abound  not,  where  the 
tramp  is  only  a  creation  of  the  comic  journals  — 
in  America,  if  such  a  truth-teller  as  Gorky  arose, 
we  should  fall  upon  him,  neck  and  crop,  gag 
him,  and  without  bothering  over  the  formality 
of  a  writ  de  lunatico  inquirendo,  clap  the  fellow 
behind  the  bars  of  a  madhouse  cell.  It  would 
serve  him  right.  The  ugly  cancers  of  the  social 
system  should  never  be  exposed,  especially  by 
a  candid  hand!  In  art,  to  tell  truths  of  this 
kind  does  not  alone  shame  the  devil,  but  out- 
rages the  community.  No  wonder  Emperor 
William  does  not  grace  such  performances  by 
his  presence.  No  wonder  Gorky  is  a  suspect  in 
Russia.  He  tells  the  truth,  which  in  the  twen- 
tieth century  is  more  dangerous  than  hammering 
dynamite  ! 

One  detail  I  have  forgotten.  Old  Luka  the 
Pilgrim  is  asked  by  Wasjka  Pepel  where  he 
purposes  travelling  after  he  leaves  their  haunt. 
To  Little  Russia,  he  says,  adding  that  he  has 
heard  of  a  new  faith  being  preached  out  there, 
284 


MAXIM  GORKY'S  NACHTASYL 

and  he  will  see  if  there  is  anything  in  it.  There 
might  be  —  men  search  and  search  for  better 
things.  ...  If  God  will  but  give  them  pa- 
tience, all  will  be  well!  Perhaps  this  new 
preacher  has  found  the  light !  It  is  a  touch 
unmistakably  of  Russia,  where  even  the  irreli- 
gious are  not  without  faith.  Gorky,  with  all  his 
moral  anarchy,  is  as  superstitious  as  a  moujik. 
He  shakes  his  fists  at  the  eternal  stars  and  then 
makes  the  sign  of  the  cross.  It  may  be  for  that 
reason  he  wrote  The  Night  Refuge. 
De  profundis  ad  te  clamavi  ! 


285 


VIII 
HERMANN   SUDERMANN 

THE  unfailing  brilliancy  of  expression  and 
abundant  technical  power  of  Hermann  Suder- 
mann  have  so  seldom  failed  him  in  the  lengthy 
list  of  his  plays  and  novels  that  his  admirers 
are  too  often  oblivious  to  his  main  defect  as 
an  artist  and  thinker  —  a  dualism  of  style  and 
ideas.  The  Prussian  playwright  wishes  to  wear 
three  heron  feathers  in  his  cap.  Cosmopolitan 
as  he  is,  he  would  fill  his  dramas  with  the  in- 
comparable psychologic  content  of  Ibsen  ;  he 
would  be  a  painter  of  manners ;  he  would  emu- 
late Sardou  in  his  constructive  genius.  To  have 
failed,  and  failed  more  than  once,  in  his  effort  to 
precipitate  these  three  qualities  in  his  surpris- 
ingly bold  and  delicate  wit,  is  not  strange.  And 
to  have  grazed  so  often  the  edge  of  triumphs, 
not  popular  but  genuinely  artistic,  warrants  one 
in  placing  Sudermann  high  in  the  ranks  of 
German  dramaturgists. 

In  a  very  favourable  review  written  by  Mr. 
W.  S.  Lilly  of  The  Joy  of  Life,  he  ranks 
Sudermann  among  the  great  painters  of  man- 
ners, and,  after  reading  Dame  Care  and  The 
Cat's  Bridge,  we  are  tempted  to  agree  with 
286 


HERMANN    SUDERMANN 

the  enthusiasm  of  the  English  critic.  He  thus 
sets  down  the  qualities  of  a  painter  of  manners  : 
"  Sense  and  sensibility,  sagacity  and  suppleness, 
openness  of  mind  and  originality  of  thought, 
depth  of  feeling  and  delicacy  of  touch."  Does 
Sudermann's  art  include  all  these  things  ?  We 
think  not.  Rather  is  he  as  a  dramatist — the 
expert  Teckniker,  the  man  of  the  theatre,  im- 
pregnated by  the  dominant  intellectual  ideas  of 
the  hour,  than  a  poet  who  from  a  haunting 
necessity  gazes  into  his  heart  and  then  writes : 
Sudermann  is  too  photographic;  he  too  often 
wills  his  characters  into  a  mould  of  his  own,  not 
of  their  own,  making ;  he  wills  his  atmosphere 
to  blend  with  his  theses,  the  reverse  of  Haupt- 
mann's  method.  He  is  more  cerebral  than  emo- 
tional, more  of  a  philosopher  than  a  dramatic 
psychologist.  Above  all,  he  is  literary  ;  he  has 
the  literary  touch,  the  formal  sense,  the  up- 
gushing  gift  of  verbal  expression.  Add  to  this 
order  of  talent  a  real  feeling  for  dramatic  nuance, 
and  Sudermann's  enigmatic  warring  opposites 
of  temperament  and  action  seem  remarkable. 

In  1889,  miraculous  year  of  modern  artistic 
Germany,  Sudermann's  dramatic  debut  in  Hon- 
our was  more  of  a  nine  days'  wonder  than 
Hauptmann's  Before  Sunrise.  The  surety  of 
touch,  the  easy  mastery  of  theatric  effects,  the 
violent  contrasts,  and  the  sparkling  dialogue 
transformed  Sudermann's  cometary  career  into 
a  fixed  star  of  the  first  magnitude.  To-day  this 
first  play  appears  banal  enough.  Time  has  per- 
287 


ICONOCLASTS 

mitted  us  to  see  it  in  completer  historic  perspec- 
tive. Ibsen's  influence  in  the  posing  of  the  moral 
conflict  is  speedily  recognized,  just  as  Count  Von 
Trast  may  be  traced  to  those  raisonneurs  so  dear 
to  the  younger  Dumas,  those  human  machines 
spouting  logic  and  arranging  the  denouement 
like  the  god  behind  the  cloud.  One  inevitably 
recalls  the  relation  of  Bjornsen  to  Ibsen  in  the 
present  position  of  Sudermann  and  Hauptmann. 

Yet  it  is  easy  to  admire  Honour.  It  contains, 
notably  in  the  two  acts  of  the  "hinter  haus,"  real 
strokes  of  observation  and  profound  knowledge 
of  human  nature.  The  elder  Heinecke,  rapacious 
rascal,  is  a  father  lost  to  all  sense  of  shame,  for  he 
closes  his  eyes  to  his  daughter's  behaviour.  This 
same  old  scamp  is  both  true  and  amusing.  Nor 
is  his  wife  depicted  with  less  unwavering  fidelity. 
The  motive  of  Honour  is  not  alone  the  ironic 
contrast  of  real  and  conventional  ideals  of  honour 
—  it  shoots  a  bolt  toward  Nietzsche's  land  where 
good  and  evil  blend  in  one  hazy  hue.  Suder- 
mann, here  and  in  nearly  all  his  later  pieces, 
challenges  the  moral  law  —  Ibsen's  loftiest  heron 
feather  —  and  if  any  appreciable  theory  of  con- 
duct is  to  be  deduced  from  his  works,  it  is  that 
the  moral  law  must  submit  to  the  variations  of 
time  and  place,  even  though  its  infraction  spells 
sin,  even  though  the  individual  in  his  thirst  for 
self-seeking  smashes  the  slate  of  morality  and 
perishes  in  the  attempt 

This  battle  of  good  and  evil  Sudermann 
dwells  upon,  often  to  the  confusion  of  moral 
288 


HERMANN    SUDERMANN 

values,  often  to  the  tarnishing  of  his  art.  And 
in  his  endeavour  to  hold  the  dramatic  scales  in 
strict  equipoise,  to  intrude  no  personal  judg- 
ments, he  leaves  his  audiences  in  blank  bewilder- 
ment. Better  the  rankest  affirmations  than  the 
blandest  negatives.  Yes  counts  far  more  than 
No  in  the  theatre,  and  Sudermann  is  happier 
when  he  is  violently  partisan.  His  contempo- 
rary, Hauptmann,  shows  us  the  shipwreck  of 
souls  in  whom  the  spiritual  stress  preponderates. 
Sudermann,  except  in  rare  instances,  sticks  closer 
to  the  social  scale  and  its  problems ;  and  when 
he  does  he  is  at  his  best,  for  it  cannot  be  said 
that  The  Three  Heron  Feathers,  written  under 
the  spur  of  The  Sunken  Bell,  betrays  a  mas- 
tery or  even  a  familiarity  with  those  shadowy 
recesses  wherein  action  is  a  becoming,  where 
the  soul  blossoms  from  a  shapeless  mass  into 
volitional  consciousness.  Sudermann's  art  is 
more  external ;  it  concerns  itself  with  the  How 
rather  than  with  the  Why,  and  one  feels  that 
storm  and  fury  were  deliberate  engraftments, 
not  the  power  which  works  from  within  to  the 
outer  world. 

There  is  character  drawing  of  an  unexcep- 
tional kind  in  Honour.  Robert  Heinecke  re- 
turns from  foreign  lands  to  find  his  family 
degraded,  his  sister  trading  on  her  beauty,  his 
father  and  mother  accepting  bounty  from  the 
mansion  house,  the  employers  of  the  honourable 
son.  The  maze  in  which  he  is  caught  is  con- 
structed with  infinite  skill ;  the  expository  act 
289 


ICONOCLASTS 

is  the  best.  There  is  not  much  mystery  —  we 
seem  here  to  be  in  the  clear  atmosphere  of  the 
French  dramaturgists,  Augier  and  Dumas ;  while 
the  finale  is  rather  flat,  we  look  for  a  suicide 
or  a  scandal  of  some  sort.  The  author  keeps 
himself  steady  in  the  saddle  of  realism.  This 
ending  is  lifelike,  inasmuch  as  the  hero  goes 
away  with  Graf  Trast,  who  literally  reasons  him 
out  of  his  dangerous  mood.  We  feel  that  all 
the  rest  do  not  count,  not  the  ignoble  Kurt  and 
his  snobbish  friends,  his  philistine  parents ;  not 
the  Heineckes  with  their  vulgar  avarice,  their 
Zola-istic  squalor.  The  romance  is  conventional. 
In  fact,  so  cleverly  did  Sudermann  mingle  the 
new  and  old  in  the  opposing  currents  of  dramatic 
art  that  his  play  was  instantly  a  success. 

Accused  of  this  ambition  to  drive  two  horses, 
the  dramatist  threw  down  as  a  gauge  to  criti- 
cism, Sodom  (1891).  It  was  not  a  great  play, 
because  it  lacked  logic,  balance,  truthfulness.  A 
distorted  picture  of  artistic  degeneracy,  its  satire 
on  certain  circles  in  Berlin  caused  a  furore ;  but 
the  piece  had  not  the  elements  of  sincerity. 
Technically  it  revealed  the  mastery  of  almost 
hopeless  material,  and  while  one's  aesthetic  sense 
and  the  fitness  of  things  are  hopelessly  upset, 
the  cunning  hand  of  the  prestidigitator  is  every- 
where present.  There  are  some  episodes  that 
stir,  notably  the  scenes  between  father  and  son ; 
but  the  grimness  and  sordidness  are  too  much 
for  the  nerves. 

Magda  (1893)  struck  a  new  note.  Many 
290 


HERMANN    SUDERMANN 

oelieve  it  to  be  Sudermann  at  his  best.  Thus 
far  he  has  not  surpassed  it  in  unity  of  atmosphere 
and  dissection  of  motives.  That  the  morale  may 
be  all  wrong  is  not  to  the  point.  Again  we  see 
Ibsen's  mighty  shadow  in  the  revolt  of  the  new 
against  the  old ;  daughter  and  father  posed  an- 
tagonistically with  the  figure  of  the  pastor,  one 
of  the  German  author's  better  creations,  as  a 
mediating  principle. 

One  of  many  reasons  that  the  Magda  of  Suder- 
mann is  a  remarkable  play  is  the  critical  con- 
troversy over  its  interpretation.  Each  one  of  us 
reveals  his  temperamental  bias  in  the  upholding 
of  Bernhardt's  or  Duse's  or  Modjeska's  respec- 
tive readings.  And  which  one  of  the  three  ar- 
tists has  exhausted  the  possibilities  of  Magda's 
many-sided  character?  On  this  point  Herr 
Sudermann  is  distressingly  discreet,  although 
he  has  a  preference  for  Duse,  as  is  well  known 
to  a  few  of  his  intimates.  The  reason  is  simple. 
Duse  presents  more  phases  of  the  character,  ex- 
hibits more  facets  of  this  curious  dramatic  gem, 
and  by  her  excellences,  and  not  her  limitations, 
we  must  judge  her  performance. 

We  have  seen  a  dozen  Magdas :  English, 
French,  German,  Italian,  Belgian,  Jewish,  and 
Scandinavian.  Fanatical  admirers  of  Bernhardt 
claim  preeminence  for  her  in  the  part,  certain 
sides  of  which  are  child's  play  for  her  accom- 
plished virtuosity.  But  the  critic  who  knows 
Sudermann's  Magda  also  knows  that  the  very 
brilliancy  of  the  glorious  French  actress  throws 
291 


ICONOCLASTS 

the  picture  into  too  high  relief ;  there  are  no 
middle  tints  in  Sarah's  embodiment.  It  recalls 
the  playing  of  an  overmasteringly  brilliant  pian- 
ist, one  who  rolls  over  the  keyboard  like  a 
destructive  avalanche.  The  human  note,  the 
sobbing,  undulating  quality  of  a  violoncello 
whose  tone  flashes  fire,  is  missing.  Little  doubt 
that  Bernhardt  gives  us  certain  moods  of  Magda 
in  a  transcendental  manner.  She  is  the  supreme 
artist  of  all  in  the  exposition  of  tragic  bravura. 
Yet  she  is  not  Sudermann's  Magda.  This  is  so 
well  known  as  to  be  a  critical  commonplace. 

Mrs.  Campbell's  Magda  is  above  the  ordinary. 
Modjeska's  powers  were  on  the  wane  when  she 
appeared  in  the  play ;  but  we  cannot  forget  the 
native  sweetness  and  true  Polish  zal  with  which 
she  suffused  the  character.  Supple,  poetic, 
charming,  she  was,  and  despite  all,  lacked  much 
of  Magda's  complexity.  Does  Duse  entirely 
fulfil  all  the  requirements  of  the  rdle  ? 

We  do  not  know.  We  only  feel  that  in 
mood-versatility  she  outstrips  all  others  we  have 
seen,  and  if  she  has  not  seen  farthest  into  the 
soul  of  the  opera  singer,  she  has  viewed  it  from 
more  sides  than  her  contemporaries.  Hence 
her  interpretation  is  more  various  and,  it  being 
Duse,  is  more  wonderful  in  the  technical  sense 
in  the  revelation  of  an  effortless  art. 

She  is  natural,  never  photographic.  Photog- 
raphy arrests  motion ;  Duse  is  ever  in  modula- 
tion. Rather,  if  you  will  have  pictorial  analogues, 
might  her  Magda  be  compared  to  a  Richard 
292 


HERMANN   SUDERMANN 

Earlom  or  a  Valentine  Green  mezzotint,  wherein 
the  luminous  shadows  and  faint  spiritual  over- 
tones are  acidly  mellow.  And  who  shall  forget 
the  manner  of  her  throat  as  it  trilled  with  rage 
when  to  her  Von  Keller  makes  his  perfectly 
honourable  and  perfectly  abominable  offer ! 
We  have  dwelt  so  much  upon  the  admirable 
reticences  of  this  artist,  upon  her  "tact  of  omis- 
sion," we  really  forget  that  she  never  stops 
acting  or  living  her  part  for  a  moment.  She 
continually  evokes  musical  imagery,  for  the  ex- 
quisite and  harmonious  interrelations  of  every 
movement,  every  word,  unroll  before  us  like 
great,  solemn  music. 

Magda  will  probably  outlive  The  Joy  of 
Life,  as  it  has  already  outlived  the  dramatist's 
Honour.  The  theme  of  the  first  is  based  on 
more  fundamental  facts  than  the  others  —  the 
clash  of  will  and  affection.  If  all  human  fami- 
lies were  loving,  if  father  never  opposed  daugh- 
ter or  son  flouted  mother,  then  such  a  play  as 
Magda  never  would  have  been  written.  But, 
alas !  the  newspapers  prove  that  family  life  is 
not  always  celestial,  indeed,  that  it  is  often 
bestial.  But  the  Parson  Tickletexts  never  ac- 
knowledge this. 

There  is  no  lesson  in  Magda;  the  ending  is 
not  a  sermon  —  unless  you  wish  it  to  prove  that 
contradicting  apoplectic  fathers  is  a  fatal  pro- 
ceeding. Magda  is  an  individualist.  She  is 
selfish.  This  trait  she  shares  with  the  mass  of 
mankind.  Her  "  I  am  I  "  is  neither  a  procla- 
293 


ICONOCLASTS 

mation  nor  a  challenge  to  the  world.  It  is  the 
simple  confession  of  a  woman  who  knows  her- 
self, her  weaknesses,  her  errors,  who  has  battled 
and  wrested  from  life  a  little,  passing  triumph, 
the  stability  of  which  she  doubts. 

"We  must  sin  if  we  wish  to  grow.  To  be- 
come greater  than  our  sins  is  worth  more  than 
all  the  purity  you  preach."  Is  this  immoral? 
We  hasten  to  quote  a  sentence  from  John  Mil- 
ton's Areopagitica,  the  magnificent  music  of 
which  fascinated  the  ear  of  Robert  Louis  Ste- 
venson, quite  apart  from  its  significant  wisdom. 

"  I  cannot  praise  a  fugitive  and  cloistered 
virtue,  unexercised  and  unbreathed,  that  never 
sallies  out  and  sees  her  adversary,  but  slinks  out 
of  the  race  where  that  immortal  garland  is  to  be 
run  for,  not  without  dust  or  heat."  Poor  Mag- 
da's  virtue  was  certainly  not  cloistered.  She 
ran  for  fame's  garland  in  all  the  dust  and  heat 
of  the  artistic  arena.  She  won,  she  lost.  The 
bigot  discerns  in  Magda  an  abandoned  crea- 
ture ;  the  men  and  women  who  see  life  from  all 
sides  and  know  the  fallibility  of  the  flesh  are 
apt  to  forgive  her  shortcomings. 

"  The  ghost  of  a  linen  decency  yet  haunts  us." 
She  must  have  had  a  detestable  disposition. 
Fancy  what  a  spoilt  opera  singer  with  sore  tonsils 
can  be  on  a  rainy  day,  especially  when  she  reads 
the  name  of  her  dearest  foe  "  substituting"  on  the 
bill.  Then  drop  her  in  the  sleepy  old  town  of  her 
nativity,  where  a  harsh,  opinionated  father  would 
wprm  from  her  every  detail  of  her  dubious  past 
294 


HERMANN   SUDERMANN 

Sudermann  has  done  this  with  the  result  —  a 
lifelike  play,  in  which  nothing  is  demonstrated 
except  the  unalterable  stupidity  of  things  in 
general  and  the  naked  fact  that  "  I  am  I  "  is 
the  only  motto,  whether  secret  or  published,  of 
every  human  crawling  'twixt  earth  and  sky.  In 
the  pastor  Sudermann  attempts  to  paint  the 
altruist  in  action.  It  is  hardly  a  convincing 
piece  of  portraiture.  Your  true  altruist  is 
bounded  by  Tolstoy  on  the  north,  by  Howells 
on  the  west,  by  Francis  of  Assisi  on  the  south, 
and  on  the  east  by  Buddha.  Outside  of  book 
covers  the  person  exists  not. 

The  Battle  of  the  Butterflies  (1894)  was  seen 
in  New  York  at  Conried's  Irving  Place  Theatre. 
It  is  comedy  of  a  skin-deep  variety,  entertain- 
ing !  And  here's  an  end  to  it.  Happiness  in 
a  Corner  is  deeper  in  sentiment.  It  has  the 
Ibsen  touch  with  a  pathos  foreign  to  the  Nor- 
wegian. Inspector  Orb  is  of  Ibsen,  so  is  Pastor 
Weidemann,  and  the  others  —  Bettina,  Racknitz, 
Elizabeth,  and  Helena  —  are  alive  and  suffer  and 
joy.  There  is  vitality  in  this  work.  Also  is 
there  force  and  consummate  cleverness  in  the 
three  one-act  plays  grouped  under  the  title 
Morituri  ( 1 896).  Avowedly  devoted  to  the  theme 
of  death  they  are  all  three  illustrative  of  the 
dramatist's  feeling  for  the  right  phrase,  the 
only  right  situation.  Teja,  Fritzchen,  and  The 
Eternal  Masculine  show  us  in  three  widely  dif- 
fering modes  how,  as  in  life,  we  miss  the  hap- 
piness near  at  hand  while  longing  for  the  ideal  — 
295 


ICONOCLASTS 

a  theme  dealt  with  more  broadly  in  The  Three 
Heron  Feathers. 

John  the  Baptist  (1898),  like  Paul  Heyse's 
Mary  Magdalen,  was  the  occasion  of  a  scandal 
in  Berlin,  because  the  censor  forbade  its  per- 
formance on  religious  grounds,  though  Otto 
Ludwig's  Maccabees  and  Hebbel's  Judith  are 
stock  pieces.  As  a  drama  it  is  weak,  for  the 
vacillating  hero  wearies  us  to  distraction,  not- 
withstanding the  poetic  charm  of  the  prologue. 
If  the  Christ  had  been  boldly  dramatized,  as  was 
evidently  the  playwright's  purpose,  the  outcome, 
no  matter  how  shattering  to  pious  nerves,  would 
have  been  better  artistically.  But  this  vague 
dreamer,  pessimistic,  halting,  irresolute,  what 
can  we  make  of  him  across  the  footlights,  and 
for  once  Sudermann's  technical  ability  failed 
him. 

The  Three  Heron  Feathers  (1899)  is  an  at- 
tempt to  meet  Hauptmann  on  equal  terms.  It 
lacks  coherence,  despite  the  occasional  lift  of 
its  verse  —  Sudermann  fancied  that  he  had 
forsworn  the  prose  of  the  realistic  drama  for- 
ever —  while  the  lofty  moral  ideal,  unduly 
insisted  upon,  soon  becomes  a  thorn  in  the 
flesh.  No  one  is  alive  but  the  trusty  Lorbuss, 
the  Prince  being  a  theory  set  in  action.  The 
next  play,  St.  John's  Fire  (1900),  we  confess  to 
having  read  with  more  pleasure  than  seeing  it 
enacted.  It  goes  up  in  the  air  soon  after  the 
curtain  rises  on  Act  III,  though  the  story  is 
a  capital  one  for  dramatic  purposes.  It  would 
296 


HERMANN   SUDERMANN 

seem  that  Sudermann  was  again  attacked  by 
his  doubting  mania.  He  has  contrived  the 
atmosphere  of  romance,  the  pagan  fire  of  St. 
John,  the  mystery  of  night,  the  passion  of 
Georg  and  Marikke ;  but  either  his  courage 
failed  him,  or  else  beset  by  some  idea  of  resig- 
nation he  spoilt  his  development  and  conclusion, 
and  we  leave  the  theatre  dissatisfied,  not  with 
that  spiritual  dissatisfaction  which  Ibsen  plants, 
a  rankling  sore  in  one's  heart,  but  the  kind  that 
grows  into  resentment  against  the  dramatist,  for 
Marikke  is  a  girl  of  whom  Thomas  Hardy 
would  have  been  proud.  And  then  there  is  a 
muddle  of  symbolism  and  heredity,  —  Sudermann 
endeavouring  to  scoop  up  in  his  too  comprehen- 
sive net  the  floating  ideas  of  the  hour.  Georg 
von  Hartwig's  sudden  lapse  into  a  selfish  citizen 
we  can  never  forgive. 

Of  the  criticism  of  masterpieces  there  is  no 
end.  Take  Sudermann's  The  Joy  of  Life 
as  an  example.  (Why  such  an  Ibsen-like  title 
for  Es  Lebe  das  Leben?)  Obsessed  by  subject 
and  subject-matter  only,  many  of  us  turn  a 
blind  side  to  the  real  qualities  that  make  up 
an  excellent  play.  Now  this  harping  on  the 
theme  of  a  drama  —  whether  pleasant,  unpleas- 
ant, dull,  brilliant,  or  truthful  —  is  eminently 
amateurish.  It  is  rather  the  function  of  the 
manager ;  it  affects  his  box-office,  and,  as  he  is 
not  in  business  for  art,  he  cherishes  that  brave 
little  place  above  all  else.  But  a  critic  is  sup- 
posed to  wear  an  open  mind,  to  accept  a  subject 
297 


ICONOCLASTS 

without  looking  the  gift  poet  in  the  mouth,  and 
also  to  judge  how  near  the  dramatist  reaches  the 
goal  of  his  own  ideal  —  not  the  critic's.  That 
we  do  not  do  so  is  to  be  pitied.  It  is  because 
of  this  that  so  many  wonderful  plays  never  see 
the  light,  or  else  are  botched  at  their  birth. 

This  persistent  avoidance  of  the  dramatist's 
viewpoint,  this  refusal  to  enter  into  sympathetic 
complicity  with  him,  leads  to  sad  conclusions. 
If  you  decide  violently  that  a  play  has  no  right 
to  exist  because  it  exhibits  a  situation  or  char- 
acter abhorrent  to  your  notions,  in  what  a  pre- 
dicament is  the  dramatist !  It  recalls  the  story 
told  by  George  Saintsbury  about  the  man  who 
was  shown  Flameng's  beautiful  etching  of 
Herrera's  Child  with  the  Guitar.  "  But  I  don't 
like  babies,"  said  the  man,  unconsciously  illus- 
trating uncatholicity  in  criticism.  The  subject 
did  not  appeal  to  him,  therefore  its  truthful  art 
could  go  hang. 

Too  great  an  artist  to  preach  a  moral,  Su- 
dermann  nevertheless  bestows  the  justice  de- 
manded by  destiny  upon  the  luckless  Beata, 
Countess  of  Michael  von  Kellinghausen.  The 
Joy  of  Life  is  next  to  Magda  technically  one  of 
Sudermann's  biggest  achievements. 

To  present  such  a  trite  theme  with  new  har- 
monies is  a  triumph.  The  tragic  quality  of  the 
piece  in  an  atmosphere  bordering  on  the  aris- 
tocratic commonplace  is  not  the  least  of  its 
excellences.  We  know  that  life  is  daily,  that 
great  art  is  rare,  that  the  average  sensual  man 
298 


HERMANN    SUDERMANN 

prefers  a  variety  show  to  a  problem  play ;  yet 
we  are  not  abashed  or  downcast.  The  cant 
that  clusters  about  cults,  theatric  or  artistic, 
should  not  close  our  ears  to  the  psychologic 
power  and  the  message  —  if  you  will  have  the 
word — of  this  Sudermann  play.  If  his  Beata, 
—  Ibsen  has  a  Beata  in  Rosmersholm  and 
D'Annunzio  one  in  his  La  Gioconda  —  was  a 
sorely  beset  woman,  if  she  felt  too  much, 
thought  too  much,  —  one  suspects  her  of  poring 
over  Nietzsche  and  hearing  much  Wagner;  wit- 
ness that  allusion  to  Hans  Sachs's  quotation 
from  Tristan, — yet  is  she  not  a  fascinating 
soul?  Are  there  to  be  no  semitones  in  char- 
acter ?  Must  women  be  paragons  and  men 
perfect  for  inclusion  in  a  play?  If  this  be  so, 
then  all  the  art  of  the  Elizabethans  is  false, 
their  magnificent  freedom  and  their  wit  a 
beacon  of  warning  to  pure-minded  playwriters. 
And,  pray,  out  of  what  material  shall  the  dram- 
atist weave  his  pattern  of  good  and  evil? 

But  had  Sudermann  transposed  his  Beata 
to  the  fourteenth  century,  had  he  dowered  her 
with  mediaeval  speech  and  the  name  of  Beatrice, 
had  he  surrounded  her  with  lovers  in  tin-plate 
armour,  our  shrinking  natures  might  not  have 
hied  to  cover.  The  pathos  of  distance  would 
have  softened  the  ugly  truths  of  the  modern 
drawing-room.  The  Joy  of  Life  is  a  cap- 
ital play.  There  is  much  conventionality  dis- 
played in  the  minor  characters ;  only  Beata 
and  Richard  are  really  original.  And  the  use 
299 


ICONOCLASTS 

of  the  divorce  debate  as  a  symbol  reveals  the 
real  weakness  of  the  play,  though  structurally 
it  has  some  striking  virtues.  The  small  part  of 
Meixner,  the  theological  student  turned  social- 
democrat,  had  vraisemblance.  It  suggests  the 
character  of  Krogstad  in  A  Doll's  House.  That 
tiresome  exhorter,  Count  Trast,  in  Sudermann's 
Honour,  is  luckily  not  duplicated.  And  we  doubt 
not  that  the  absence  of  explicatory  comment  by 
the  author  is  disheartening  to  a  public  which 
likes  all  the  questions  raised  answered  at  the 
close,  after  the  manner  of  a  Mother  Goose  mo- 
rality. Neither  D'Annunzio  nor  Sudermann  is  a 
preacher.  As  in  the  ghastly  illumination  of  a 
lightning  flash,  souls  hallucinated  by  love,  terror, 
pity,  despair,  are  seen  struggling  in  the  black 
gulf  of  night.  And  then  all  becomes  abysmal 
darkness.  There  are  the  eternal  verities,  the 
inevitable  compensations  in  this  play.  The 
application  of  the  moral  is  left  to  the  listener, 
who  is  given  the  choice  of  echoing  or  not  echo- 
ing the  immortal  exclamation  of  Mr.  Saints- 
bury's  unknown,  "  But  I  don't  like  babies !  " 

In  Storm-Brother  Socrates,  Sudermann  places 
his  scene  in  a  small  East  Prussian  town,  possibly 
Matizken,  where  he  was  born  in  1857.  The 
schoolmaster,  the  grocer,  the  Jewish  rabbi,  the 
tax-collector,  and  the  dentist  are  the  chief  char- 
acters of  this  satiric  comedy.  A  lot  of  old  cro- 
nies, men  who  went  through  the  stirring  times 
of  '48,  form  a  revolutionary  guild,  calling  them- 
selves "The  Brotherhood  of  the  Storm."  Harm- 
300 


HERMANN  .SUDERMANN 

less  enough,  they  still  declaim  against  Bismarck 
—  the  time  of  action  is  twenty  years  ago  —  and 
talk  of  their  warlike  exploits.  As  the  dramatist 
is  preeminently  a  painter  of  manners,  many  of 
his  portraits  are  masterly.  The  dentist,  Hart- 
mayer,  is  a  hater  of  tyranny  and  an  idealist. 
He  has  assumed  the  name  of  Socrates,  his  com- 
panions selecting  such  stirring  pseudonyms  as 
Catiline,  Giordano  Bruno,  Spinoza,  and  Ponia- 
towski.  This  dentist's  son'  Fritz  has  adopted 
the  same  profession ;  and  being  called  to  attend 
a  reigning  prince's  dog  for  toothache,  he  is 
denounced  by  his  anti-imperialist  of  a  father. 
But  Fritz  is  a  socialist  and  has  no  prejudices  on 
the  subject  of  canine  gums.  Another  brother, 
an  impudent  lad,  is  a  conservative.  When  the 
archives  of  the  Bund  fall  into  the  hands  of  the 
local  magistrate,  the  old  man  is  thoroughly  mis- 
erable. His  associates  fly  and  he,  expecting 
arrest,  is  decorated  for  the  services  of  his  son 
in  saving  an  aristocratic  dog's  teeth !  He 
accepts,  and  the  curtain  falls  on  a  rather  dis- 
cursive, ill-natured  comedy.  However,  Suder- 
mann's  virtuosity  has  plenty  of  opportunity  for 
display. 

The  minor  characters  are  well  sketched.  The 
waitress,  Ida,  is  an  exceedingly  vital  figure,  as  is 
the  innkeeper.  The  dialogue  is  Sudermann  almost 
at  his  best,  —  witty,  sarcastic,  ironical,  tersely 
vigorous,  and  true  to  life.  Like  Daudet  and 
Flaubert,  Sudermann  loves  to  prick  the  bloated 
German  bourgeois.  There  is  a  little  Hebrew, 
301 


ICONOCLASTS 

named,  from  sheer  cruelty,  Siegfried  Markuse. 
His  description  of  his  freshman  visits  to  a  Corps- 
Kneipe  at  the  Kbnigsberg  University  is  a  fair 
example  of  the  playwright's  powers  of  unerring 
observation. 

"Just  as  soon  as  I  gave  my  name,"  relates 
Siegfried,  "the  man  across  the  table  began  to 
crack  jokes  on  Jews.  I  play  the  naive  and 
keep  the  game  going.  Then  you  should  have 
heard  them  snicker.  I  see  plainly  enough  that 
they  are  laughing  at  me,  but  I  clench  my  teeth 
and  say  to  myself, '  You  are  going  to  compel  me  to 
respect  your  superior  intellect.  .  .  .'  I  talked 
about  everything,  —  old  idealism  and  modern 
gaiters;  Germany's  inalienable  national  rights 
and  the  swellest  way  of  training  poodles;  the 
unimportance  of  Hegel's  conception  of  divinity 
and  the  importance  of  a  good  pug  dog.  I  quoted 
Plato,  Schopenhauer,  and  the  latest  sharper. 
Everybody  looked  at  me  with  mouth  agape,  and 
I  thought  I  had  them  just  where  I  wanted  them 
when  my  friend  Hartmayer  came  and  whispered 
that  he  was  commissioned  to  give  me  a  hint  that 
this  was  no  place  for  my  colossal  jaw,  and  that 
it  would  be  better  if  I  stayed  away  next  time. 
Outside  I  shook  my  fist  and  swore  :  '  If  you  won't 
have  us  as  friends,  you  w ill  have  us  as  enemies ! 
Then  we  shall  see  who  comes  out  on  top.' " 

Mr.  Lilly  sees  in  Sudermann  an  affinity  with 

Euripides,  which  may  mean  that  he  is  a  painter 

of  a  society  in  its  decadence.     His  affinities  as 

pointed  out  seem  to  be  Parisian ;  at  least  he  is 

302 


HERMANN    SUDERMANN 

Parisian  in  his  gift  of  observation  and  style,  Ger- 
man as  is  his  power  of  reasoning.  He  is  un- 
moral, following  the  tendenz  of  his  time,  but 
not  so  completely  as  D'  Annunzio,  who  is  satis- 
fied with  sheer  shapes  of  beauty.  With  Suder- 
mann  it  is,  first,  technical  prowess,  secondly, 
social  satire,  and  he  is  always  brilliant  if  not 
always  satisfying. 


303 


IX 
PRINCESS   MATHILDE'S   PLAY 

A.  S.  A.  I.  Madame  laprincesse  Matkilde, 

sonnet  improvise 
sttr  des  rimes  donnees  sw  un  svjet  choisi 

LA  VERANDAH 

Sous  cette  verandah,  peinte  en  vert  d'espe'rance, 

On  arrive  et  Ton  part  avec  un  souvenir 

Si  doux,  qu'on  y  voudrait  aussitdt  revenir 

Sous  les  fleurs  des  tropiques  et  les  plantes  de  France. 

Une  main  de  d£esse  y  gue*rit  la  souffrance, 
Au  me'rite  modeste  elle  ouvre  1'avenir. 
Elle  sait  couronner  comme  elle  sait  punir. 
Pour  le  ge'nie  elle  est  pleine  de  de'fe'rence. 

Devant  elle  enhardi,  1'esprit  prime-sautier, 
Ainsi  qu'Euphorion  dansant  sur  la  prairie, 
Peut,  entre  terre  et  ciel,  se  montrer  tout  entier. 

Pour  que  son  ceil  pdtille  et  que  sa  levre  rie 
Et  que  de  toute  huroeur  sa  levre  soit  gue"rie, 
II  suffit  d'un  bon  mot  de  son  bouffon  Gautier. 

— THEOPHILE  GAUTIKR. 

THE  late  Princess  Mathilde  Bonaparte  meant 
many  things  to  many  people.  Her  ancestry, 
her  marriage  to  Prince  Demidoff,  her  political 
power  at  the  Tuileries,  her  sympathetic  patron- 
age of  artistic  folk,  her  personal  beauty,  love 
304 


PRINCESS    MATHILDE'S    PLAY 

affairs,  and  feminine  caprices — all  these  serve  the 
world  as  pleasing  material  for  anecdotes.  The 
Princess  was  fond  of  the  theatre,  and  fonder  still 
of  a  premiere  when  the  play  was  written  by  one 
of  her  intimate  circle.  She  was  surrounded  by 
a  distinguished  group  of  poets,  painters,  drama- 
tists, novelists,  and  diplomats.  De  Morny  called 
her  "the  man  of  the  family."  She  was  good 
to  gaze  upon,  and  she  had  intellect.  After  the 
death  of  Sainte-Beuve,  the  publication  of  her 
correspondence  with  that  celebrated  critic  gave 
us  a  portrait  of  his  friend.  It  occurs  in  Lettres 
de  la  Princesse  :  — 

"  The  Princess  has  a  high,  noble  forehead,  and 
her  light  golden  hair,  leaving  uncovered  on  each 
side  broad,  pure  temples,  is  bound  in  wavy 
masses  on  the  full,  finely  shaped  neck.  Her 
eyes,  which  are  well  set,  are  expressive  rather 
than  large,  gleam  with  the  affection  of  the  thought 
of  the  moment,  and  are  not  of  those  which  can 
either  feign  or  conceal.  The  whole  face  indicates 
nobleness  and  dignity,  and,  as  soon  as  it  lights 
up,  grace  united  to  power,  frankness,  and  good- 
ness ;  sometimes,  also,  it  expresses  fire  and  ardour. 
The  head,  so  finely  poised  and  carried  with  such 
dignity,  rises  from  a  dazzling  and  magnificent 
bust,  and  is  joined  to  shoulders  of  statuesque 
smoothness  and  perfection." 

That  description  should  cover  a  multitude  of 

indiscretions,    such    as   the    publication    of   the 

letters.     She  had  already  given  Taine  his  conge" 

for  his  criticism  of  Napoleon  in  the  Revue  des 

305 


ICONOCLASTS 

Deux  Mondes.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Jerome 
and  Caroline  of  Wiirttemberg  and  was  as  proud 
as  Napoleon.  She  never  forgave  an  offence, 
and  Taine's  conception  of  the  First  Consul  as  a 
superior  bandit  closed  her  doors  upon  him. 

She  stood  with  forced  equanimity  the  first  two 
of  his  masterly  studies ;  at  the  third  she  exclaimed 
with  true  l&mimne  finesse  of  cruelty  :  — 

"  Ah,  I  know  what  I  shall  do  !  I  owe  Mme. 
Taine  a  call.  I  shall  leave  my  card  with  P.  P.  C, 
which  will  mean  that  I  take  leave  of  him  forever. 
I  cannot  allow  a  friend  to  attack  violently  the 
head  of  my  family,  the  man  without  whom  I 
should  perhaps  be  nothing  but  a  little  orange- 
vender  on  the  bridge  at  Ajaccio."  She  put  her 
threat  into  execution.  Taine,  shocked  by  the 
rupture,  called  on  Renan.  After  hearing  the 
tale  without  any  comment  but  a  sweet,  ironical 
smile,  Renan  answered  : — 

"  Cher  ami,  I  have  quarrelled  with  a  much 
greater  lady  than  the  Princess  Mathilde." 

"  With  whom,  then  ? " 

"  The  Church,"  answered  Renan,  dryly. 

Mathilde  did  not  respect  rank  more  than  genius. 
She  set  her  face  against  the  free  and  easy 
democratic  manners,  and  because  of  this  dis- 
liked the  American  invasion  —  few  of  our 
countrymen  crossed  her  doors.  One  night 
Edmond  About  was  invited  to  her  house,  and 
during  the  trying  moments  before  dinner  he 
amused  her  with  his  wit.  Suddenly  the  Count 
Nieuwerkerke  appeared.  "Go  away,"  cried 
306 


PRINCESS    MATHILDE'S    PLAY 

the  novelist,  "  and  let  us  be  alone,  you  jealous 
fellow."  The  Princess  arose,  rang,  and  in- 
structed the  servant :  "  Conduct  M.  About  to 
his  carriage.  He  is  not  dining  here  to-night." 
And  the  man  of  the  Broken  Ear  went  away,  his 
temper  much  ruffled. 

In  1847  the  Princess  settled  in  Paris  per- 
manently. She  had  been  divorced  from  the 
handsome,  profligate  Demidoff,  and  her  allow- 
ance, a  big  one,  had  been  given  her  by  a  decree 
from  the  Czar.  Over  Napoleon  III  she  wielded 
great  influence.  Of  him  the  De  Goncourts 
said,  "  The  Emperor  would  be  an  excellent 
somnambulist  if  only  he  had  intervals  of  lu- 
cidity ; "  while  Flaubert  declared  him  to  be 
clever  because,  knowing  his  ignorance,  he  had 
the  wisdom  to  hold  his  tongue.  The  Empress 
Eugenie  was  always  jealous  of  Mathilde's 
power  with  her  imperial  cousin.  That  she  was 
at  the  latter's  funeral  is  an  illustration  of  life's 
topsy-turvy  tricks.  Eugenie  was  jealous  also  of 
the  Castiglione,  and  the  De  Goncourts  do  not  fail 
to  register  Constance's  spiritual  mot  about  the 
Emperor. 

"  If  I  had  only  resisted,  to-day  I  should  have 
been  an  Empress  !  " 

This  recalls  the  delightful  answer  made  by 
Alfred  de  Musset  to  a  famous  actress  of  the 
Theatre  Fran^ais  —  is  it  necessary  to  give  the 
name  ?  Once  the  lady  had  said  :  — 

"  Monsieur  de  Musset,  I  hear  you  have 
boasted  of  being  my  lover."  "I  beg  your 
307 


ICONOCLASTS 

pardon,"  answered  the  friend  of  Rachel  and 
George  Sand;  "I  have  always  boasted  to  the 
contrary." 

The  rupture  of  Mathilde  Bonaparte  and 
Sainte-Beuve  took  place  in  1 869.  The  brothers 
De  Goncourt  heard  its  details  from  the  Princess. 
They  found  her  still  trembling  from  the  stormy 
interview.  "  I  shall  never  see  him  again  — 
never  again  !  I,  who  fell  out  with  the  Empress 
on  his  account !  .  .  .  He  has  gone  over  to  the 
Temps,  our  personal  enemies  !  Ah  !  I  said  to 
him,  '  Monsieur  Sainte-Beuve,  listen !  I  am 
sorry  you  did  not  die  last  year,  for  I  should 
then  have  mourned  a  friend.' " 

She  must  have  been  difficult  at  times.  She 
had  a  good  opinion  of  her  birth,  wealth,  posi- 
tion, and  beauty.  "Yes,  I  had  a  peculiar  and 
most  extraordinary  complexion.  I  remember 
in  Switzerland,  when  I  was  fourteen,  they  put  a 
Bengal  rose  leaf  on  my  cheek,  and  were  unable 
to  distinguish  between  the  two." 

On  one  occasion,  when  Edmond  de  Goncourt 
was  openly  rude  to  her  at  her  Chateau  Saint- 
Gratien,  she,  with  her  guests,  sat  stupefied. 
Later  he  apologized,  tears  in  his  eyes  —  he  was 
a  gallant,  handsome  gentleman  —  and  he  re- 
lates most  ingenuously,  "  Suddenly  she  put  her 
arms  around  me  and  kissed  me  on  each  cheek, 
saying,  '  Of  course  I  forgive  you  —  you  know 
how  truly  attached  I  am  to  you ;  I  also,  of  late, 
have  felt  quite  nervous  and  upset.'  " 

It  was  this  passage  that  caused  Henry  James 
308 


PRINCESS    MATHILDE'S   PLAY 

to  shiver  ;  not  because  of  the  fact,  but  the  lack  of 
tact.  The  De  Gon  courts  were  taken  up  by  the 
Princess  in  1862.  Jules,  the  younger  brother, 
died  in  1870,  literally  killed  by  his  devotion  to 
literary  art.  The  chiselling  of  the  De  Goncourt 
phrases  was  deadly  to  brain  and  body.  It  is 
little  wonder  that  their  novels,  one  after  the 
other,  until  Germinie  Lacerteux  appeared,  should 
have  been  indifferently  received.  As  Alphonse 
Daudet,  ever  receptive  and  tender  in  his  judg- 
ments of  original  work,  wrote :  "  Novels  such 
as  had  never  been  seen  before;  novels  that 
were  neither  moulded  upon  Balzac  nor  diluted 
from  George  Sand,  but  novels  made  up  of  pic- 
tures, .  .  .  with  plot  scarcely  indicated,  and 
great  blanks  between  the  chapters ;  real  break- 
neck ditches  for  the  bourgeois  reader.  To  this 
add  an  entirely  new  style,  full  of  surprises  —  a 
style  from  which  all  conventionality  is  banished, 
and  which,  by  a  studied  originality  of  phrase  and 
image,  forbids  any  commonplace  in  the  thought; 
and  then  the  bewildering  boldness,  the  perpetual 
uncoupling  of  words  accustomed  to  march  to- 
gether like  oxen  dragging  a  plough,  the  earnest 
care  in  selection,  the  horror  of  saying  all  and 
anything ;  considering  this,  how  can  one  be 
astonished  that  the  De  Goncourts  were  not 
immediately  greeted  by  the  applause  of  the 
common  herd  ? " 

The  mystery  of  it  is,  Why  should  the  De  Gon- 
courts have  cared  for  the  applause  of  that  same 
bourgeois  public  they  so  despised,  reviled,  and 
309 


ICONOCLASTS 

held  up  to  mockery  in  their  books  ?  Gautier, 
Zola,  Daudet,  had  to  work  like  galley  slaves  for 
a  living ;  the  two  brothers  and  Flaubert  were 
rich,  as  riches  go  with  literary  men ;  why,  then, 
did  they  care  whether  they  were  popular  or 
not  ?  Was  it  because  they  were  human,  notwith- 
standing their  theories  of  impassibility,  perfec- 
tion, and  art  for  art's  sake  ? 

The  Chateau  Saint-Gratien  was  the  Princess 
Mathilde's  country  home  until  her  death.  There 
she  entertained,  as  entertained  George  Sand  at 
Nohant,  all  her  friends.  Until  his  death,  in 
1896,  Edmond  de  Goncourt  was  her  privileged 
visitor.  The  work  of  the  two  brothers  in  eigh- 
teenth-century chronicles  amused  and  interested 
her,  especially  their  minute  histories  of  such 
actresses  as  Du  Barry,  Sophie  Arnold ;  and, 
earlier,  great  women  like  Mme.  de  Pompadour, 
the  Duchess  of  Chateauroux ;  great  painters, 
Watteau,  Boucher,  Latour,  Greuze,  Lancret, 
Fragonard;  and  stage  favourites  such  as  Mes- 
dames  Saint  Huberty,  Clairon,  and  La  Guimard. 

The  brothers  introduced  Japanese  art  into 
France.  They  were  amateurs  of  the  exquisite. 
Their  house  at  Auteuil  was  truly  "  la  maison  d'un 
artiste  au  XIX  siecle."  And  consider  the  labour, 
acute,  agonizing,  and  enormous,  involved  in  the 
writing  and  production  of  their  novels :  Germinie, 
Madame  Gervaisais,  Renee  Mauperin,  Manette 
Salomon  (which  was  the  first  novel  of  studio  life, 
excepting  Fromentin's  Domenique,  in  France, 
and  one  that  influenced  Zola  greatly  in  his 
310 


PRINCESS    MATHILDE'S    PLAY 

L'CEuvre  and  De  Maupassant  in  his  Strong  as 
Death),  Charles  Demailly — a  wonderful  study 
of  journalism  in  Paris,  a  true  continuation  of 
Balzac's  Lucien  Rubempr6 ;  Sceur  Philomene ; 
and,  written  by  Edmond  after  the  death  of 
Jules,  La  Fille  Elisa,  Les  Freres  Zemganno,  La 
Faustin,  and  Cherie.  In  addition,  there  are  the 
nine  volumes  of  the  journal,  a  study  of  Gavarni, 
the  master  caricaturist ;  vaudevilles,  pantomimes, 
letters,  portraits,  several  plays,  histories,  Etudes, 
an  early  novel  En  18 — ,  and  miscellany  amount- 
ing in  all  to  over  forty  volumes.  Yet  this  fra- 
ternal pair,  because  of  their  wealth  and  birth, 
are  still  contemptuously  alluded  to  as  "amateurs." 
Yes,  amateurs,  indeed,  in  the  fullest  sense  of  a 
misinterpreted  word,  amateurs  of  beautiful  sen- 
sations, amateurs  in  their  devotion  to  an  ideal 
hopeless  of  attainment,  amateurs  who  might 
well  be  patterned  after  in  this  age  of  hasty  pro- 
duction, vulgar  appeal  to  the  sentimental,  to  the 
cheap  and  obvious.  Aristocrats  were  the  De 
Goncourts,  yet  their  white  fingers  never  faltered 
when  they  held  the  burin  and  engraved  in  in- 
delible letters  that  first  great  naturalistic  novel, 
Germinie  Lacerteux,  the  tale  of  an  unhappy 
servant. 

Even  their  friend  De  Monselet  pronounced  it 
"  sculptured  slime,"  and,  to  the  curiously  inclined, 
interesting  are  the  critiques  of  Brunetiere ;  of 
Barbey  D'Aurevilley  —  who  hacked  away  at 
everybody  on  general  principles ;  of  Ren6e 
Doumic,  who  always  follows  the  lead  of  Bru- 


ICONOCLASTS 

netiere;  of  Maurice  Spronck,  who  declaied  that 
the  brothers  were  victims  of  a  malady  known 
to  psycho-physiologists  as  Audition  coloree.  But 
there  were  fairer  critics.  The  studies  of  Zola, 
Daudet,  ^  Henri  Ceard,  Paul  Bourget,  Henry 
James,  Emile  Hennequin,  the  friendly  words 
of  Turgenev,  that  gentle  Russian  giant,  the  valu- 
able suggestions  of  Flaubert  —  these  were  balm 
to  the  sensitive  nature  of  Edmond  de  Goncourt. 
He  lived  to  head  a  school  —  hitherto  rather 
sterile,  it  must  be  confessed  —  and  before  his 
death  he  dowered  an  academy.  (Ah,  if  all 
French  literary  men  had  but  a  moiety  of 
Daudet's  humour  in  the  matter  of  academies !  ) 

But  the  contribution  of  the  De  Goncourts  to 
the  novel  will  be  lasting.  They  have  one  cele- 
brated disciple,  Karl  Joris  Huysmans,  who  be- 
gan under  their  influence  and  has  traced  for 
himself  over  the  "  great  highway  so  deeply  dug 
out  by  Zola  ...  a  parallel  path  in  the  air  by 
which  we  may  reach  the  Beyond  and  Afterward, 
to  achieve  thus,  in  one  word,  a  spiritualistic 
naturalism."  In  the  last  analysis  Huysmans 
is  an  artistic  stepson  of  the  epileptic  Dostoi- 
evsky, greatest  of  all  psychologists ;  and  while 
he  may  have  forgotten  it,  his  first  artistic  spring- 
board was  the  De  Goncourts. 

What  Henrietta  Mar^chal  accomplished  de- 
spite its  failure,  was  in  the  dialogue  —  modern, 
picturesque,  and  of  the  best  style  for  the  stage, 
because  it  set  forth  the  particular  turn  of  mind 
of  each  talker ;  and  it  was  also  the  first  attack 
312 


PRINCESS   MATHILDE'S    PLAY 

on  that  stronghold  of  French  dramatic  tradition, 
the  monotonous  semi-chanting  of  the  conserva- 
toire-taught actor.  Here  was  an  elastic,  natural 
dialogue,  charged  with  turns  of  phrases  taken 
up  from  the  sidewalk,  neologisms,  slang — in  a 
word,  lifelike  talk  as  opposed  to  the  old  stilted 
verbiage. 

The  play  was  a  failure,  of  course,  as  we  shall 
see,  for  extraneous  reasons.  The  director  of 
the  Theatre  Frangais,  M.  Edouard  Thierry,  put 
it  on,  and  after  the  sixth  performance,  during 
all  of  which  the  actors  never  heard  their  own 
voices  because  of  the  organized  popular  tumult, 
the  play  was  withdrawn.  On  its  publication  in 
book  form  it  sold  better  than  its  author's  novels  — 
a  fact  Zola  notes  with  his  accustomed  scent  for 
the  perversity  of  mankind. 

Yet,  as  Daudet  declared,  Henrietta  Marechal 
was  throughout  "  a  fine,  bold,  and  novel  produc- 
tion. And  a  short  time  after,  the  same  people 
who  had  hooted  it  frantically  applauded  Heloise 
Paranquet  and  the  Supplice  d'une  Femme,  plays 
of  rapid  action  going  straight  to  their  issue, 
like  a  train  at  full  speed,  and  of  which  .  .  . 
Henrietta  Marechal  was  the  inspiration.  And 
was  not  the  first  act,  taking  place  in  the  opera 
ball,  with  its  crowd,  its  abusive  chaff,  its  masks 
joking  and  howling  in  pursuit  of  each  other,  that 
close  approach  to  life  and  reality,  ironic  and 
real  as  a  Gavarni  sketch  —  was  it  not  '  natural- 
ism '  on  the  stage  fifteen  years  before  the  word 
'  naturalism  '  was  invented  ?  " 
313 


ICONOCLASTS 

Daudet,  with  characteristic  delicacy  and  fidel- 
ity to  the  theme,  elsewhere  describes  a  read- 
ing at  Edmond  de  Goncourt's  house  of  his  Les 
Freres  Zemganno  —  those  fraternal  heroes  of 
the  sawdust. 

When  the  play  was  read  to  the  members  of 
the  Comedie  Franchise,  Minister  Rouher  —  who 
afterward  distinguished  himself  so  terribly  in 
the  Franco-Prussian  War  !  —  suggested  to  the 
trembling  authors  that  the  valiant  girl,  who  as- 
sumes her  mother's  guilt  and  is  shot  dead  by 
her  enraged  father,  be  wounded  only,  and  marry 
her  mother's  lover !  Charming,  is  it  not  ?  The 
suggestion  was  frowned  down  by  Marshal  Vail- 
lant,  an  old  soldier,  who  did  not  fear  the  smell 
of  stage  powder. 

Written  in  1863,  Henrietta  Marechal  was  not 
produced  until  December  5,  1865,  at  the  Comedie 
Franchise,  and  after  its  speedy  withdrawal  it 
was  not  revived  until  March  3,  1885,  at  the 
Odeon.  In  the  preface  to  the  De  Goncourts' 
Theatre,  Edmond  wrote  of  the  painful  struggles 
the  pair  endured  to  obtain  a  hearing.  They 
composed  a  vaudeville,  Sans  Titre,  which  was 
not  heard,  and  followed  this  by  other  attempts, 
during  which  they  slowly  attained  some  know- 
ledge of  dramatic  construction,  and  in  1867  fol- 
lowed Henrietta  Marechal  with  a  five-act  prose 
drama  called  La  Patrie  en  Danger.  This  was 
also  read  at  the  Franchise,  in  1868,  admired, 
and  dropped.  Edmond  declared  it  superior  to 
its  predecessor.  It  deals  with  the  epoch  of  the 
3H 


PRINCESS    MATHILDE'S   PLAY 

French  Revolution,  and  need  not  concern  us 
now. 

Of  interest  is  his  declaration  that  in  the  novel 
he  is  a  realist  (he  is  really  a  modified  roman- 
tic, with  a  romantic  vocabulary,  selecting  for 
subjects  modern  themes);  but  in  the  drama  he 
totally  disagrees  with  Zola  and  his  naturalistic 
formulas  as  applied  to  the  theatre.  They  have 
dug  up  a  letter  he  sent  over  a  decade  ago  to 
M.  Lothar,  who  made  the  German  translation 
of  La  Faustin.  It  all  is  to  be  found  in  this 
preface  of  1879.  De  Goncourt,  who  naturally 
ranks  the  drama  below  the  novel  as  literature, 
upholds  the  conventions  of  the  former.  The 
drama  is  by  its  nature  romantic  and  limited  in 
scope.  The  monologues,  asides,  denouements, 
sympathetic  characters,  and  the  rest  must  always 
endure.  He  does  think,  however,  that  reality 
may  be  brought  nearer,  and  that  literary  lan- 
guage? should  give  place  to  a  style  which  will 
reveal  the  irregularity  and  abruptness  of  vital 
conversation.  In  this  latter  particular  he  has 
been  a  benefactor.  Unnatural  theatrical  dia- 
logue he  slew  with  his  supple,  free,  naturally 
coloured  speech  in  Henrietta  Marechal.  Stage 
talk  should  be,  De  Goncourt  asserted,  flowing 
and  idiomatic  —  never  bookish.  The  ball  scene 
in  Henrietta  proves  that  the  brothers  could 
practise  as  well  as  preach. 

It  is  a  mistake,  too,  to  think  that  their  novels 
and  plays  are  immoral  or  hinge  always  on  the 
eternal  triangle.  Various  passions  are  treated 
315 


ICONOCLASTS 

by  them  in  their  air-tight  receiver ;  their  meth- 
ods of  psychological  evisceration  recall  the 
laboratory  of  an  analytical  chemist.  In  Ger- 
minie  it  is  the  degradation  of  a  woman  through 
weakness ;  in  Madame  Gervasais  —  that  Odyssey 
of  a  woman's  soul  —  it  is  the  mystic  passion  for 
religion;  in  Manette  Salomon,  art  and  woman 
and  their  dangers  to  the  impressionable  artistic 
temperament ;  Charles  Demailly  pictures  the 
gulfs  of  despair  into  which  the  literary,  the 
poetic  soul  may  be  plunged ;  Sceur  Philomene 
shows  the  combat  between  religious  vows  and 
nature  ;  and  so  on  through  a  wide  gamut.  And 
these  two  nervous  artists  have  been  mockingly 
called  maniacs,  their  work  has  been  derided 
as  inutile  —  that  work  which  practically  recon- 
structed the  artistic  life  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury and  discovered  to  itself  the  artistic  soul  of 
the  nineteenth.  If  they  had  remained  normal 
units  of  their  class,  they  would  have  gambled, 
shot  pigeons,  sported  mistresses,  and  dabbled 
in  racing,  drinking,  and  the  other  sterilities  of 
fashionable  life.  They  preferred  art,  and  they 
were  rewarded  in  the  usual  fashion.  The  sin- 
gular thing  is  that  they  expected,  ingenuous 
souls,  encouragement  from  their  world.  Fame 
came  only  when  Jules  was  dead  and  Edmond 
too  old  and  embittered  to  appreciate  it.  The 
survivor  saw  his  ideas  appropriated  by  Zola 
and  the  younger  crowd,  and  cheapened  and 
coarsened  beyond  all  likeness  to  the  original. 
What,  then,  must  have  been  the  dismay  and 


PRINCESS   MATHILDE'S   PLAY 

perplexity  of  the  brothers  when  they  heard  the 
hissing,  catcalls,  groans,  and  yells  of  an  organ- 
ized clique  sworn  to  kill  Henriette  Mar^chal  ? 
The  body  of  the  house  was  not  hostile ;  but  poli- 
tics, the  Republican  opposition  to  the  patronage 
of  the  Bonapartes,  aroused  students  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Seine,  and  a  scandalous  scene,  only 
equalled  by  the  Parisian  productions  of  Hernani 
and  Tannhauser,  occurred.  Strangely  enough, 
Theophile  Gautier,  who  had  figured  in  the  Her- 
nani fracas,  had  written  the  prologue  to  Henri- 
etta Marechal,  and  spoke  it  without  opposition 
from  the  malcontents,  though  he  was  the  libra- 
rian of  Princess  Mathilde.  Not  a  word  could 
be  heard  in  any  of  the  scenes,  and  when  Got, 
the  comedian  who  played  in  the  cast,  —  the  rest 
were  Delaunay,  the  Laf ontaines,  Arnould-Plessis, 
Bressant,  and  other  distinguished  artists,  —  ap- 
peared to  announce,  as  was  the  custom,  the 
authors'  names,  he  stood  for  ten  minutes  unable 
to  make  himself  heard  in  the  terrific  hubbub. 
The  Journal  of  the  brothers  contains  a  minute 
account  of  the  affair,  and  of  their  terror  as  they 
stood,  pale,  breathless,  peeping  out  upon  a  dis- 
ordered sea  of  human  faces.  After  all,  it  is  a 
joy,  despite  its  frequent  injustice,  to  see  a  com- 
munity take  its  drama  seriously  and  not  merely 
as  a  first  aid  to  digestion. 

The  De  Goncourts  had  the  satisfaction  a  few 
weeks  later  to  hear  Moliere's  Precieuses  Ridi- 
cules hissed  by  the  same  mob  believing  that  it 
was  Henrietta  Marechal. 
317 


ICONOCLASTS 

Reading  this  play  to-day  one  can  see  that  its 
novelties  must  have  provoked  hostility,  though 
such  critics  as  Jules  Janin,  Gautier,  Sarcey,  Uhl- 
bach,  Nestor  Roqueplan,  Paul  de  Saint-Victor, 
and  others  wrote  impartial  and  enthusiastic  criti- 
cisms. The  middle-aged  woman  who  loves  a 
young  man  was  not  pleasing  upon  the  boards, 
and  her  daughter's  death  at  the  pistol  of  her 
father  caused  a  shudder;  for  it  was  the  rank 
side  of  adultery  exhibited  without  that  pleasing 
gloze  of  sentiment  so  dear  to  the  average  Gallic 
playwright  and  public.  Naturally  politics  caused 
the  row,  for  Princess  Mathilde  had  steered  the 
play  into  the  notice  of  M.  Thierry.  The  speeches 
are  too  long  and  the  action  moves  languidly. 
Perhaps,  after  he  had  surveyed  the  situation  in 
a  calmer  mood,  Edmond  de  Goncourt  was  im- 
pelled to  write  his  preface  espousing  the  meth- 
ods of  Meilhac  and  Hal6vy.  He  said,  among 
other  acute  things,  that  the  avarice  in  Moliere's 
play,  L' Avare,  was  "  1'avarice  bouffe  "  when  com- 
pared with  the  powerful  and  compelling  study 
made  by  Balzac  of  Pere  Grandet. 

He  also  records  the  cynical  remark  of  a  well- 
known  actress  who,  after  listening  to  the  aesthetic 
blague  in  a  well-known  literary  group,  broke 
forth  with  this  apostrophe,  "  Vous  etes  jeunes, 
vous  autres,  mais  le  theatre  au  fond,  mes  en- 
fan  ts,  c'est  1'absinthe  du  mauvais  lieu,"  and  to 
his  dying  day  Edmond  de  Goncourt  called  the 
theatre  a  place  for  the  exercises  of  educated 
dogs  or  an  exhibition  of  marionettes  spouting 


PRINCESS    MATHILDE'S   PLAY 

their  tirades.  Between  these  extremes  he 
thought  there  was  a  place  where  artistic  spirit 
might  be  displayed  in  a  dignified  and  beautiful 
style.  But  he  never  found  that  place,  despite 
his  poignant  finale,  when  Henrietta  declares  that 
her  mother's  lover  is  her  own. 

Contrast  this  effective,  if  too  heroic,  de"noue- 
ment  with  the  cold  cynicism  of  Maurice  Donnay 
in  L'Autre  Danger,  where  a  pure  girl  is  forced 
by  cruel  circumstances  to  hear  her  mother's 
shame  published,  to  learn  the  awful  news  that 
the  man  she  loves  is  the  lover  of  her  mother, 
and,  to  cap  this  assault  upon  our  nerves,  the 
lover  is  made  to  marry  the  wretched  girl  so  as 
to  divert  suspicion  from  the  inhuman  mother. 

In  the  grip  of  his  dark  pessimism  Edmond 
de  Goncourt  predicted  that  in  fifty  years  the 
book  would  kill  the  theatre.  It  was  about  nine 
years  later  that  Ernest  Renan,  according  to 
Octave  Uzanne,  said  one  evening  in  conversa- 
tion among  friends,  "  Fifty  years  hence  no  one 
will  open  a  book."  Both  prophecies  are  likely 
to  come  to  naught.  Bad  books,  bad  plays,  we 
shall  always  have  with  us.  Life  seems  too  brief 
for  the  larger  cultivation  of  beautiful  art. 


319 


DUSE   AND   D'ANNUNZIO 


ELEONORA  DUSE! 

When  this  extraordinary  woman  first  came 
to  New  York  in  January,  1893,  she  attracted 
a  small  band  of  admirable  lunatics  who  saw 
her  uncritically  as  a  symbol  rather  than  as  an 
actress.  Some  of  us  went  to  fantastic  lengths  in 
our  devotion.  She  was  Our  Lady  of  Evil,  one 
of  Baudelaire's  enigmatic  women ;  Mater  Malo- 
rium,  a  figure  out  of  De  Quincey's  opium-stained 
dreams ;  she  was  not  only  superior  to  Sarah  of 
the  Sardou  regime,  but  the  true  successor  to 
Rachel.  This  semi-absurd  jumbling  of  Foe, 
Swinburne,  Baudelaire,  and  the  Elizabethans  — 
what  a  tremendous  Duchess  of  Malfi  we  fancied 
Duse  would  make !  —  was  not  altogether  the 
fabric  of  fantasy.  Nor  was  personality  the 
strongest  asset  in  her  art.  She  had  suffered 
academic  training ;  she  had  practised  when 
young  all  the  scales  of  thumb-rule  theatricalism ; 
she  had  played  Cosette  when  a  child  and  knew 
Electra.  The  apprenticeship  then  had  been 
exhausting,  the  thirty-six  situations  she  had  by 
320 


DUSE  AND   D'ANNUNZIO 

heart,  a  long  race  of  play  actorc.  determined 
her  vocation,  and  yet  she  rose  superior  to  all 
these  things,  to  experiences  that  would  have 
either  crushed  or  made  mechanical  the  aver- 
age artist.  Life  with  its  disillusionments  was 
the  sculptor  that  finally  wrought  the  something 
precious  and  strange  we  recognize  in  Eleonora 
Duse. 

Without  especial  comeliness,  without  the 
golden  ductile  voice  of  Bernhardt,  Duse  so 
drilled  her  bodily  organs  that  her  gestures, 
angular  if  executed  by  another,  become  potent 
instruments  ;  her  voice,  once  rather  thin,  siccant, 
now  gives  a  soft,  surprised  speech  ;  and  her  face 
is  the  mirror  of  her  soul.  Across  it  flit  the  ago- 
nies, the  joys,  of  the  modern  anaemic,  overwrought 
woman.  She  excels  in  the  delineation  of  listless, 
nervous,  hysterical,  and  half-mad  souls.  She 
passes  easily  from  the  passionate  creatures 
of  Dumas  and  Sardou  to  the  chillier-blooded 
women  of  Ibsen  and  Sudermann,  unbalanced 
and  out  of  tune  with  their  surroundings.  Shall 
we  ever  forget  her  reading  of  Vladimir's  letter 
in  Fedora?  And  yet  her  assumption  of  the 
Russian  was  a  tour-de-force  of  technic ;  tem- 
peramentally the  role  belongs  to  the  hotter- 
tongued  Bernhardt.  With  Santuzza,  a  primitive 
nature,  she  accomplished  wonders.  That  mis- 
erable, deserted  girl,  in  a  lowly  Sicilian  village, 
with  her  qualms  of  conscience,  her  nausea, 
her  hunted  looks — here  was  Verga's  heroine 
stripped  of  all  Mascagni's  rustling  music,  the 
321 


ICONOCLASTS 

soul  showing  clear  and  naked  against  the  sordid 
background  of  Cavalleria  Rusticana. 

The  slinking  ferocity  of  Cesarine's  entrance 
into  her  husband's  atelier ;  the  scene  with  An- 
tonine ;  the  interview  of  Camille  with  Armand's 
father;  the  gracious  gayety  of  Goldoni's  La 
Locandiera ;  that  hideous  battle  of  an  exas- 
perated man  and  woman  before  the  closed  doors 
in  Fernande ;  Magda's  wonderful  blush  as  she 
meets  Kellar,  the  cold-hearted  prig,  who  ruined 
her  —  all  these  stale  situations  and  well-worn 
types,  Magda  being  an  honourable  exception, 
Duse  literally  re-created.  In  them  we  felt  the 
power  of  her  intellect,  the  magic  of  the  woman. 
And  she  stared  tradition  in  the  face  by  refus- 
ing to  "  make  up,"  unconcealing  her  own  hair 
and  doing  nothing  to  restrict  the  plasticity  of  her 
figure.  Now  she  wears  wigs,  uses  rouge  dis- 
creetly, for  her  hair  is  gray  and  her  face  more 
matured.  But  her  art  is  broader,  though  losing 
none  of  its  former  subtlety.  There  is  more 
weight,  more  brilliancy,  in  her  action  and  gesture, 
and  that  doubtless  prompted  some  critics  to  com- 
pare her  to  Sarah  Bernhardt.  But  she  is  still 
Eleonora  Duse,  the  woman  with  the  imagination, 
the  glance,  and  the  beautiful  hands. 

The  wisdom  of  her  choice  in  selecting  only 
D'Annunzio's  dramas  is  not  altogether  apparent. 
She  will  listen  to  no  advice ;  perhaps  she  is  on 
a  mission ;  perhaps  she  wishes  to  make  known 
everywhere  the  genius  of  her  young  country- 
man, and  to  go  back  with  the  means  to  raise 
322 


DUSE   AND    D'ANNUNZIO 

upon  the  border  of  Lake  Albano  a  great  inde- 
pendent theatre,  the  poet's  dream  of  a  dramatic 
Bayreuth.  The  D'Annunzio  plays  are  not  of 
the  kind  that  appeal  to  the  larger  public.  For 
the  student  of  contemporary  drama  they  are  of 
surpassing  interest  in  their  freedom  from  con- 
ventional stage  trickery  and  characterization ; 
La  Gioconda,  La  Citta  Morta,  are  really  lyric 
masterpieces  in  little,  though  many  will  wince 
at  the  themes,  at  their  bold  development  and 
treatment.  When  floated  on  the  wings  of  Rich- 
ard Wagner's  mighty  music  in  Die  Walkiire, 
the  incestuous  loves  of  Siegmund  and  Sieglinde 
are  applauded ;  prose,  be  it  as  polished  and  as 
sonorous  as  D'Annunzio's,  has  not  the  same 
privilege  as  music.  So  the  motto  of  Catulle 
Mendes  for  a  playhouse  has  a  point,  "Aban- 
don all  reality  ye  who  would  enter  here."  And 
D'Annunzio  never  falters  before  harsh  reality, 
as  those  who  have  read  his  romances  well 
know.  In  each  of  his  plays  we  assist  at  the 
toilette  of  a  woman's  soul. 

Duse's  art,  however,  covers  a  multitude  of 
D'Annunzio's  morbidities — everything  that  does 
not  derive  from  bread  and  butter,  children  in 
arms,  politics,  dog-shows  and  gowns,  is  adjudged 
morbid  by  a  world  that  feeds  on  divorce  scan- 
dals, crimes  of  the  day,  and  the  diversions  of 
multi-millionnaires.  D'Annunzio,  who  does  not 
pretend  to  be  a  mere  painter  of  manners,  is 
given  over  entirely  to  the  portraying  of  the 
primary  passions.  This  Swinburne  of  Italy 
323 


ICONOCLASTS 

became  famous  in  his  sixteenth  year  (he  was 
born  in  1864,  and  his  real  name  is  said  to  be 
Gaetano  Rapagnetto).  Since  then  he  has  suc- 
ceeded the  poet  Carducci  in  the  affections  of  a 
certain  public,  though  his  poetic  ancestry  may 
be  easily  traced  to  Shelley,  Baudelaire,  Carducci, 
and  Stecchetti.  From  verse  he  passed  to  prose, 
writing  in  a  highly  coloured,  fluid  style  a  group 
of  novels  called  The  Romances  of  the  Rose, 
Lily,  and  Pomegranate.  The  Triumph  of  Death 
is  the  best  known  to  English  and  American 
readers,  though  Fuoco — The  Flame  of  Life 
—  set  wagging  the  tongues  of  the  curious  by 
its  carefully  exposed  portraits  of  a  celebrated 
Italian  actress  and  D'Annunzio  himself.  In 
that  astonishing  performance,  the  taste  of  which 
can  be  hardly  gauged  by  any  but  Latin  stand- 
ards, one  of  the  D'Annunzio  plays  —  The  Dead 
City  — is  set  forth  in  detail.  Whether  the 
betrayal  of  a  woman's  soul  —  for  D'Annunzio 
is  a  true  soul-hunter  —  was  made  with  the  con- 
currence of  the  subject,  no  one  seems  to  know. 
Of  the  psychologic  value  of  the  study  there  can 
be  but  one  opinion.  It  is  unique,  it  is  painful, 
it  is  appallingly  true.  D'Annunzio  now  enjoys 
a  European  reputation.  His  art,  despite  its  ex- 
quisite workmanship,  is  still  a  gallery  of  echoes. 
He  has  absorbed  all  contemporary  culture,  and 
so  chiselled  is  his  prose  that  he  has  been  called 
"the  Italian  Flaubert."  A  profound  student 
of  the  classics,  he  is  rich  in  his  scholarly  allu- 
sions. The  late  Pope  is  said  to  have  delighted 
324 


DUSE   AND   D'ANNUNZIO 

in  the  melodious  thunder-pool  of  his  style. 
From  Balzac,  Flaubert,  Zola,  Bourget,  Daudet, 
Maeterlinck,  Tolstoy,  and  Dostoievsky  he  has 
absorbed  much ;  while  he  evidently  knows  the 
English  classics.  Some  of  his  dramatic  figures 
seem  to  have  stepped  out  of  John  Webster  or 
John  Ford's  pages.  In  his  short  tales,  Novelle 
della  Pescara,  he  has  utilized  a  number  of  De 
Maupassant's  themes,  in  an  individual  manner; 
but  the  assimilation  is  complete.  Compare  La 
Ficelle  and  Foire  de  Candea  —  the  transposition 
of  character  and  place  are  most  deftly  accom- 
plished, as  a  writer  in  the  Mercure  de  France 
has  shown.  That  D'Annunzio  has  chosen  to 
depict  decadent  men  and  women,  and  all  bris- 
tling with  vitality,  is  his  personal  idiosyncrasy. 
His  chief  defect  is  an  absolute  lack  of  humour, 
and  this,  coupled  with  the  tropical  quality  of  his 
art,  causes  a  certain  monotony  —  we  breathe  a 
dense,  languorous  atmosphere.  Human  interest 
in  the  daily  sense  of  the  phrase  is  often  absent. 
He  loves  nature.  He  describes  her  lovingly. 
His  formal  sense  is  exquisite ;  yet  too  much  lit- 
erature often  kills  the  humanity  of  his  charac- 
ters. And  he  is  always  more  lyric  than  dramatic. 
"Gabriele  d'Annunzio,"  writes  M.  Huret,  "is 
of  medium  height,  slender,  not  to  say  frail,  with 
short,  reddish  hair  which  is  growing  thin  on  the 
top  of  his  finely  shaped  head,  and  this  he 
brushes  straight  back  at  the  temples ;  his  back 
already  somewhat  bent,  he  has  the  air  of  one 
of  those  aristocratic  beings  who  have  begun  life 
325 


ICONOCLASTS 

too  soon.  His  ruddy  mustache  is  trimmed  close 
to  the  lip,  and  the  points  are  turned  up  sharply 
at  the  corners,  while  the  chin  ends  in  a  little 
pointed  beard.  The  nose  is  regular  and  shows 
strength ;  the  division  between  the  nostrils  ex- 
tends below  in  a  prominent  lobe.  His  eyes,  of 
pale  blue,  like  a  faded  violet,  are  half  veiled  by 
his  heavy  lids.  Beneath  these  eyes  the  net- 
work of  fine  lines  tells  the  story  of  precocious 
weariness.  The  finely  shaped  mouth  opens 
widely  in  a  smile  over  carefully  tended  teeth. 
And  one  may  search  in  vain  in  that  face  for 
any  trace  of  the  overwhelming,  almost  savage, 
sensuality  which  his  privileged  hero  manifests 
in  all  his  novels.  The  appearance  of  his  physi- 
ognomy as  a  whole  is  rather  self-contained  and 
cold.  He  is  a  thinker,  assuredly  quite  master 
of  himself,  much  more  given  to  enthusiasm  over 
a  beautiful  verse  than  capable  of  a  real  emotion 
over  another's  grief.  Besides,  has  he  not  writ- 
ten, '  One  must  keep  one's  liberty  complete  at 
any  cost,  even  in  intoxication'  ? " 

D'Annunzio  has  ever  been  a  spoiled  darling 
of  the  Muses.  At  the  age  of  sixteen,  after  he 
had  published  that  turbulently  erotic  book  of 
verse,  Primo  Vere,  Marc  Monnier,  the  critic, 
wrote  of  him  in  the  Revue  Stiisse,  "  If  I  were 
one  of  his  masters  I  should  give  him  a  medal 
and  the  stick." 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  with  increasing  age  and 
experience  he  will  pierce  beneath  the  vesture  of 
things  and  seek  for  the  message  spiritual.  He 
326 


DUSE   AND   D'ANNUNZIO 

is  now  the  poet  of  the  fleshly,  albeit  an  inter- 
preter of  its  beauties.  The  poet  in  him  cele- 
brates the  joy  of  living,  the  joys  of  love,  of 
death,  —  oh,  he  can  pipe  you  many  sweet  lays 
of  Death  the  Triumpher !  —  of  wine,  of  art.  He 
has  just  begun  to  write  for  the  stage,  and  is 
unduly  preoccupied  with  the  sumptuousness  of 
externals,  with  the  bravery  of  words,  with  the 
torturing  complexities  of  character. 

II 

Gabriele  d'Annunzio's  La  Gioconda  is  a  four- 
act  tragedy  of  power,  beauty,  and  horror.  De- 
spite the  reputation  of  the  poet-dramatist  and  his 
undeniable  qualities  of  copious  invention,  skilful 
characterization,  and  prime  literary  ability,  this 
piece  was  not  warmly  received  in  Italy.  Its 
unrelieved  analysis,  its  slowly  accumulating  bur- 
den of  misery,  and  the  cruelty  of  the  climax  do 
not  allure  the  average  listener.  And  the  poet 
in  D'Annunzio  shows  at  every  line  —  there  are 
many  gorgeous  ones  spoken  in  La  Gioconda. 

Duse  possesses  the  subtle  hands  of  that  paint- 
er's Lisa  Gioconda,  and  as  the  motive  of  D'An- 
nunzio's play  springs  from  a  pair  of  hands  —  its 
original  title  was  The  Tragedy  of  the  Beautiful 
Hands  —  Signora  Duse  makes  of  her  fingers  ten 
eloquent  signals. 

The  opportunity  for  theatric  climax  is  rare  in 

La  Gioconda  ;  but  when  it  does  come  the  effect 

is  strong.     A  wife,  whose  love  and  devotion  are 

slighted,  dares  to  face  her  rival  in  the  studio  of 

327 


ICONOCLASTS 

the  sculptor-husband.  He  has  endeavoured  des- 
perately to  wean  himself  from  his  passion  for 
the  model  who  posed  as  his  masterpiece,  a 
Sphinx.  Attempted  suicide  before  the  action 
of  the  play  proved  how  deeply  sunk  in  his  im- 
agination is  this  crazy  infatuation.  His  wife 
meets  the  woman,  who  is  young,  beautiful, 
strange,  and  absolutely  enamoured  pf  the  sculp- 
tor. Of  her  sincerity  there  is  no  doubt.  Then 
the  dramatist  throws  wire-drawn  analysis  to  the 
winds  and  in  a  scene  of  peculiar  brutality  the 
women  duel  for  the  possession  of  the  gifted, 
worthless  man. 

Here  Duse's  imagination  and  technic  are 
revealed.  She  must  remain  the  refined  woman, 
though  her  brain  is  afire,  her  soul  up  in  arms. 
In  acrid  terms  of  reproach  and  irony  she  defies 
the  temptress  of  her  husband,  knowing  full  well 
that  he  is  lost  to  her ;  in  the  very  flush  of  defeat 
she  would  pluck  victory  by  the  sleeve.  Startled 
by  the  ready  assurance,  enraged  by  the  seem- 
ingly triumphant  wife,  Gioconda,  the  model, 
rushes  into  the  atelier,  bent  upon  destroying 
her  counterfeit  in  clay,  —  that  figure  she  so  lov- 
ingly guarded  during  the  sculptor's  illness. 

She  had  watched  the  work  of  his  soul,  while 
his  wife  nursed  only  his  sick  body.  With  this 
she  taunts  the  other.  In  despair  before  the 
looming  catastrophe,  Duse,  the  wife,  cries  that 
she  has  lied,  that  her  husband  still  loves  his 
model.  But  it  is  too  late.  The  struggle  of 
the  women  is  heard.  A  crash  and  a  scream 
328 


DUSE  AND   D'ANNUNZIO 

announce  that  the  statue  has  been  overthrown. 
Then  an  ugly  Sardou  motive  is  obtruded. 

With  the  shadow  of  eternal  regret  in  her 
eyes,  her  hands  wrapped  in  the  wet  cloths  that 
bound  the  clay,  Duse  staggers  from  behind  the 
draperies  of  the  atelier.  She  has  saved  her  hus- 
band's statue,  but  her  beautiful  hands  are  hope- 
lessly maimed.  This  scene  is  hideously  cruel. 
And  to  top  the  crescendo  of  woe,  the  vacillating 
man  runs  in.  "  You,  you,  you  !  "  sobs  his  wife  ; 
"  it  is  saved,"  and  the  curtain  blots  the  agoniz- 
ing situation  from  our  eye,  not  from  our  memory. 

The  play  might  be  truthfully  called  The  Tri- 
umph of  Art,  for,  if  it  poses  any  problem  at  all, 
it  is  this :  What  will  an  artist,  a  sensuous,  weak 
decadent,  do  when  confronted  by  the  choice  of 
relinquishing  his  wife  or  his  mistress  ?  The 
latter  is  surpassingly  beautiful,  and,  as  he  tells 
his  friend,  the  painter,  in  Act  I,  she  is  his  sole 
inspiration,  the  guiding  pillar  of  flame  for  his 
art.  "  She  has  a  thousand  statues  in  her,"  in 
that  marvellous  body  that  "is  like  a  look."  He 
loves  his  wife,  too,  but  she  does  not  reveal  to 
him  his  entire  creative  self.  She  is  a  staff  to 
lean  upon,  not  an  electric  impulse  in  his  life. 
To  the  everyday  observer  all  this  seems  a  vari- 
ation of  an  old  story.  Lucio  is  tired  of  Silvia, 
his  wife,  and  dazzles  himself  with  the  sophis- 
tries of  art — base  sensuality  being  the  real 
reason  for  his  behaviour. 

But  this  supposition  is  only  a  half-truth. 
Lucio  has  a  species  of  accursed  temperament 
329 


ICONOCLASTS 

that  needs  must  feed  upon  the  exquisite  surfaces 
of  beautiful  things.  He  is  a  true  artist  of  medi- 
aeval times,  loving  colour  and  form  for  their 
own  sake ;  art  for  art  is  his  motto,  as  it  was 
Benvenuto  Cellini's,  as  it  was  George  Eliot's 
Tito  Melemo.  Lucio's  most  eloquent  speech 
describes  the  appeal  Gioconda  makes  to  his 
artistic  nature,  the  creative  ardour  she  arouses. 
This  speech  is  of  much  significance. 

Despicable  as  is  the  man,  —  and  we  never 
doubt  his  ultimate  desertion  of  his  wife,  —  there 
is  no  denying  the  grim  truth  with  which  he  is 
depicted.  That  he  is  not  sympathetic  is  hardly 
our  affair.  It  is  bad  art  to  preach,  and  that 
D'Annunzio  never  does.  He  simply  sets  before 
us,  with  consummate  address,  a  few  episodes  in 
the  life  of  an  unhappy  family,  leaving  us  to 
draw  our  own  inferences.  His  men  and  women 
are  genuinely  alive,  and,  given  their  various 
temperaments,  they  act  as  they  inevitably  would 
in  the  world  of  the  living. 

The  character  of  the  wife,  Silvia,  is  beautiful 
despite  the  dissonance  of  the  fatal  untruth  she 
utters.  Without  mawkish  sentimentality,  she 
divines  the  eternal  child  that  is  the  basis  of 
every  artist,  and  so  she  forgives  her  husband. 
As  portrayed  by  Duse,  one  feels  that  lurking  in 
the  sanctuary  of  her  innermost  being  there  is 
the  sad,  bitter  suspicion  that  her  sacrifice  will 
be  in  vain. 

But  she  stops  not  to  count  the  cost,  and,  at 
the  end  of  Act  I,  when  the  emotional,  weak- 
330 


DUSE   AND    D'ANNUNZIO 

spined  fellow,  touched  by  her  sacrifice,  casts 
himself  sobbing  at  her  knees,  her  great  heart 
surrenders,  and  she  pets  and  pities  him.  The 
exquisite  tenderness,  soft  credulity,  and  sup- 
pressed sweetness  of  Duse  here  sound  like  a 
strain  of  marvellous  music.  The  chords  of 
human  sympathy  sing  melodiously.  And  her 
every  movement  has  the  actuality  of  life. 

After  the  third  act  any  dramatist  would  have 
cried  quits.  Not  so  D'Annunzio.  He  wishes  to 
tell  us  that  Silvia  is  deserted  forever.  Pathos, 
poetic  in  its  quality,  contrasts  with  the  horror  of 
the  preceding  scene.  We  are  shown  Silvia  at 
the  seaside,  her  crushed  hands  concealed.  To 
her  comes  La  Sirenetta,  an  elfin  creature  of  the 
sea,  a  tiny,  fantastic  fisher  maid,  who  sings  the 
delightful  ballad  of  the  Seven  Sisters  and  con- 
soles the  sorrowful  wife  and  mother.  Yes, 
Silvia  has  a  daughter,  Beata,  who  is  kept  in 
ignorance  of  her  mother's  misfortune. 

It  is  now  that  the  spectator  feels  the  remorse- 
less grip  of  the  poet.  La  Sirenetta  offers  a  star- 
fish to  Silvia  and  wonders  why  she  does  not 
accept  it.  She  is  the  solitary  shaft  of  sunshine 
in  the  play.  Beata  runs  in  with  flowers  for  her 
mother.  It  is  a  poignant  touch.  The  chilly 
indifference  of  the  dramatist  to  the  suffering 
of  his  characters,  his  complete  detachment,  is 
art  of  a  rarefied  sort,  though  not  the  art  that 
will  endear  him  to  all.  "  Beata !  "  exclaims  the 
poor  mother,  making  a  futile  gesture  with  her 
mutilated  arms.  "You  are  crying!  You  are 


ICONOCLASTS 

crying !  "  sobs  the  child,  throwing  herself  upon 
her  mother's  breast.  The  flowers  slip  to  earth. 

A  trait  of  Duse  is  the  stifling  of  her  tears 
when  her  sister  visits  her.  She  involuntarily 
lifts  her  arms,  and  then,  checking  herself  with 
an  indescribable  movement,  she  rests  her  face 
upon  her  sister's  shoulder.  There  the  tears  fall. 
There  she  dries  them.  It  is  characteristic  Duse. 
Her  entire  assumption  is  on  the  plane  of 
exalted  realism.  We  know  that  Silvia  has  a 
beautiful,  strong  soul,  that  she  succumbs  to  the 
awful  pressure  of  temptation ;  and  the  lie  she 
tells  is  henceforth  a  memory  never  lifted  from 
her  life.  In  a  measure  she  accepts  with  resig- 
nation physical  torture  and  loss  of  her  husband. 
D'Annunzio  has  not  before  created  such  a  noble 
woman.  Lucio  is  only  a  variant  of  his  typical 
man  :  George  Aurispa,  Andrea  Sperelli,  and  the 
rest  of  his  amateurs  in  corruption  and  artistic 
hunters  of  morbid  sensation.  Silvia  is  unique. 
Silvia  is  adorable  as  Duse  presents  her.  Through- 
out this  most  human  among  actresses  is  in  con- 
stant modulation ;  her  very  silence  is  pregnant 
with  suggestion.  She  is  the  exponent  of  an  art 
that  is  baffling  in  its  coincidence  with  nature. 
From  nature  what  secret  accents  has  this  Italian 
woman  not  overheard?  —  secrets  that  she  em- 
bodies in  her  art. 

There  are  many  beauties  in  the  play,  beauties 

of  style,  though  the  dialogue  in  the  early  acts 

is  in  excess  of  the  movement.     This  is  quite  in 

consonance  with  continental  ideas  of  play  writing. 

332 


DUSE  AND    D'ANNUNZIO 

In  Europe  the  art  of  elocution  is  not  a  lost  one, 
as  it  is  on  the  English  stage.  The  Italians  and 
the  French  often  speak  for  the  sheer  beauty  of 
their  expressive  tongues.  So  the  action  halts 
and  there  are  some  amateurish  strokes  betrayed 
in  the  bringing  on  of  his  characters  by  D'Annun- 
zio.  But  the  burning  rhetoric  of  the  young  poet 
lends  fascination  to  several  scenes  —  notably 
the  interview  of  painter  and  sculptor  in  Act  II. 
His  brother-poet,  Arthur  Symons,  has  Englished 
D'Annunzio's  prose  and  has  accomplished  his 
task  with  rare  distinction. 


Ill 

D'Annunzio's  Francesca  da  Rimini  is  glorified 
melodrama.  It  is  unnecessary  to  revert  to  the 
plays,  poems,  books,  pictures,  symphonies,  that 
have  been  made  with  the  unhappy  loves  of 
Francesca  and  Paolo  as  a  theme.  From  the 
day  when  the  great  Florentine  exile  sang  in 
Canto  V  of  his  Hell,  "In  its  leaves  that  day 
we  read  no  more,"  Dante  inspired  painters, 
poets,  sculptors,  —  Rodin  not  among  the  least,  — 
musicians,  and  playwrights.  Leigh  Hunt  wrote 
The  Story  of  Rimini ;  there  is  George  Boker's 
commonplace  play,  in  which  Lawrence  Barrett, 
Louis  James,  Otis  Skinner,  and  others  have 
appeared ;  there  is  an  old  play  by  Silvio  Pellico, 
and  the  two  new  settings  of  the  story  by  Stephen 
Phillips  and  Marion  Crawford  —  the  latter's  ver- 
sion prepared  for  Sarah  Bernhardt —  are  of  yes- 
333 


ICONOCLASTS 

terday's  doings.  Both  Liszt  and  Tschalkowsky 
have  composed  symphonic  poems  on  the  sub- 
ject. 

And  now  D'Annunzio,  as  if  he  wished  to 
demonstrate  his  fitness  in  the  handling  of  any 
dramatic  form,  conceived  and  executed  a  species 
of  poetic  melodrama  in  which  the  life  of  a  feudal 
period  is  unrolled  before  us  in  five  glowing 
tableaux.  Prodigality  of  colour,  bloody  war, 
horrid  lusts,  are  mingled  artistically  with  the  pro- 
cessional attitudes  of  tirewomen,  sweet  singing, 
and  interludes  of  lyric  passion.  As  in  a  mirrored 
dream  of  Burne-Jones,  Francesca  moves  slowly 
from  rapt  maidenhood  to  forced  marriage ;  from 
unhappy  marriage  to  deception  and  death.  Not 
content  to  follow  the  bare  lines  of  the  ancient 
chronicle,  the  playwright  weaves  into  his  sym- 
phony of  adulterous  passion  historic  episodes 
and  pictures  of  manners.  It  is  one  epoch  of 
strange,  repellent  contrasts.  Souls  are  danced 
to  the  tune  of  graceful  madrigals,  and  roses 
often  dyed  a  deeper  hue  by  blood.  In  the 
sphere  of  action  the  play  mostly  lives,  though 
there  are  some  halting  moments  of  poetic  deli- 
cacy and  introspection  set  over  against  operatic 
episodes.  We  first  assist  at  a  scene  of  jester  and 
damsels  which  recalls  Bandello  or  Boccaccio. 
It  is  gay  and  humorous,  with  the  coarse,  un- 
seemly  humour  of  the  time.  Alberich,  teased  by 
the  three  mermaids  in  Rheingold,  is  recalled. 
Two  brothers  of  Francesca  indulge  in  fierce 
recriminations  during  which  a  veiled  accusation 
334 


DUSE   AND    D'ANNUNZIO 

of  attempted  parricide  is  made,  with  the  result 
that  murder  is  barely  escaped. 

Francesca  is  deliberately  betrayed  by  her 
brother,  Ostasio  Polenta,  into  the  arms  of  the 
"  Lamester  "  Giovanni  Malatesta.  She  believes 
that  she  is  wedding  his  brother  Paolo,  called  the 
handsome  one,  skilled  in  the  fine  arts,  of  goodly 
presence,  a  warrior  and  a  lover  of  sport.  By  a 
device  near  the  close  of  Act  I  he  is  made  to 
pass  and  be  seen  by  Francesca.  She  goes  to 
her  doom  willingly.  She  loves,  but  does  not 
know  that  Paolo  is  a  married  man. 

In  the  second  act,  a  year  later,  Francesca,  in  a 
Saracenic  headdress,  seems  to  have  aged  ten 
years.  On  the  battlement  of  her  husband's 
fortress,  amid  the  enginery  of  war,  Greek  fire 
boiling  in  the  caldron,  darts  flaming,  missiles, 
catapults,  ballista,  and  outlandish  weapons  that 
crowd  the  summit  of  the  tower,  she  stands. 
There  is  a  terrific  din ;  crossbows  twang,  shout- 
ings and  tocsins  are  heard.  Francesca,  display- 
ing true  mediaeval  immobility  at  all  these  sights 
and  sounds,  hovers  about  the  platform,  ques- 
tioning, curious. 

She  insists  on  tampering  with  a  torch  of  the 
deadly  Greek  fire,  and  it  evokes  from  the  poet  a 
flock  of  his  flaming  images  that  Swinburne  alone 
might  parallel.  As  Paolo  enters,  eager  for  the 
fight,  Francesca's  attitude  shifts.  At  once  we 
see  her  aroused  interest.  She  loved  him,  loves 
him.  Their  interview  contains  some  striking 
speeches.  "And  th^D  I  fsaw  your  face,  silent 


ICONOCLASTS 

between  the  spears  of  the  horsemen/*  she  tells 
him,  and  adds  that  then  she  longed  for  death. 
He  replies  in  a  like  exalted  strain.  He  exposes 
himself  at  the  open  portcullis,  and  she  trembles 
but  is  brave. 

Her  Pater  Noster  is  an  outlet  for  her  over- 
charged feelings.  It  was  delivered  by  Duse 
with  shivering  eloquence.  The  intensity  of  the 
scene  is  heightened  by  the  entrance  of  her  hus- 
band, surnamed  Gianciotto.  He  limps,  but  is  a 
mighty  warrior  in  the  land.  The  characters  of 
the  two  brothers  are  exposed  in  a  few  lines. 
Still  another  brother  appears,  Malatestino.  He 
is  the  youngest.  His  eye  has  just  been  de- 
stroyed during  this  battle.  Malevolent,  cruel, 
he  too  loves  Francesca.  In  a  later  act  he  plays 
the  part  of  lago  to  his  elder  brother. 

Act  III  is  in  the  earlier  half  both  a  pic- 
ture and  a  promise.  Little  happens.  We  see 
Francesca  in  a  rare  room,  with  the  Adriatic  Sea 
glimpsed  through  the  open  windows.  This  scene 
is  beautifully  presented.  Upon  a  unique  lectern 
is  placed  a  tome,  The  History  of  Launcelot  of  the 
Lake,  the  very  book  mentioned  by  Dante  as  the 
fatal  one.  There  are  girlish  jesting  and  chatter- 
ing. Francesca  reads  aloud.  It  may  be  no- 
ticed that  at  the  beginning  of  Act  I  the  old 
romance  of  Tristan  and  Isolde  is  alluded  to, 
thus  suggesting  the  ultimate  ending  of  Francesca 
and  Paolo. 

Throughout  there  are  these  delicate  loops  of 
leading  motives  binding  firmly  the  somewhat 
336 


DUSE   AND    D'ANNUNZIO 

loosely  built  dramatic  tale.  Francesca  relates 
her  dream  to  her  slave,  Smaragdi.  It  is  of  a 
pursuit  through  dim  woods  of  a  naked  woman 
by  a  savage  knight  and  his  mastiffs.  The 
vision  always  ends  in  the  same  manner.  The 
knight  cuts  out  her  heart  and  throws  it  to  the 
hungry  dogs ;  they  devour  it. 

The  entrance  of  a  voluble  merchant  and 
later  an  astrologer  and  the  jester  relaxes  the 
tense  melancholy  of  the  love-lorn  lady.  A 
scene  of  bright  foolery  follows.  It  is  touched 
by  no  little  fancy.  And  then  the  slave  whispers 
that  Paolo  is  without.  Sending  away  her  people, 
she  receives  him.  There  is  the  inevitable  duo 
of  amorous  despair  and  the  fateful  reading. 
Here  D'Annunzio  handles  a  foreseen  situation 
with  poetic  skill.  He  manages  to  create  an 
atmosphere  of  suspense  from  the  beginning. 
The  final  cry  of  Francesca,  "  No,  Paolo !  "  is 
worth  a  page  of  overwrought  adjectives  and 
writhing  embraces. 

Act  IV,  the  cruellest  of  the  five,  is  devoted  to 
the  arousing  of  Giovanni's  suspicions.  This  is 
easily  accomplished  by  Malatestino,  the  wicked 
younger  brother.  Jealous  of  Paolo,  he  shocks 
Francesca  with  his  hints,  his  hot  advances,  and 
the  hideous  cruelty  he  exhibits  in  cutting  off  the 
head  of  a  prisoner.  He  drags  on  the  stage  the 
head,  enveloped  in  a  bag.  It  is  heavy,  he  re- 
marks. Oddly  enough,  D'Annunzio  manages 
matters  so  that  we  sympathize  with  the  deceived 
husband  —  rather  an  un-Latin  proceeding. 
337 


ICONOCLASTS 

In  the  final  act  D'Annunzio,  we  feel,  has 
Shakespeare  before  him.  The  scene  of  Othello 
is  evoked  at  once,  not  in  incident,  but  because 
of  the  spiritual,  tragic  atmosphere.  Francesca 
is  asleep;  she  moans,  for  she  dreams.  Her 
maidens  are  sent  away.  Her  slave  is  called,  but 
comes  not.  Tricked  by  this  plotted  absence, 
Paolo  enters.  The  lovers  are  soon  caught  and 
slain  by  Giovanni,  who  breaks  his  sword  across 
his  knee.  Every  detail  is  admirably  managed. 

Not  the  least  potent  factor  is  the  absence  of 
all  remorse  shown  by  Francesca.  The  victim 
of  deceit,  she  does  not  hesitate  to  deceive  in 
return.  In  her  love  passages,  Duse  was  truthful 
to  a  degree.  She  invested  Francesca  with  just 
the  proper  poise,  dignity,  and  suppressed  mel- 
ancholy. 

Francesca  da  Rimini  is  the  first  of  D'An- 
nunzio's  dramatic  efforts  that  attracted  popular 
favour.  It  is  an  interesting  rather  than  a  great 
play,  though  full  of  inspiring  poetry.  It  was 
first  given,  December  9,  1901,  at  Teatro  Cos- 
tanzi,  Rome,  by  the  Duse  Company,  with  the 
exception  that  Gustavo  Salvini  was  the  Paolo  on 
that  occasion. 

IV 

Compared  to  La  Gioconda,  The  Dead  City  is 
a  highly  polished  specimen  of  the  static  drama ; 
there  is  little  that  is  dynamic  until  the  scene 
before  the  last.  And  the  theme,  thunder- 
charged  as  it  is  with  symbolism,  is  fitter  for 
338 


DUSE   AND    D'ANNUNZIO 

reading  than  for  publication  before  the  foot- 
lights. The  play  is  literature  first,  drama  after- 
ward. Sarah  Bernhardt  produced  it  in  Paris. 

Incest  as  a  subject  for  dramatic  treatment  is 
no  new  thing.  The  Greeks  employed  it  as  a  leit- 
motive  of  horror,  and  in  the  CEdipus  of  Sopho- 
cles, the  Hippolytus  of  Euripides  —  we  recall 
with  grateful  memories  Bernhardt's  puissant 
Phedre  in  Racine's  paraphrase  of  the  Greek 
dramatist  —  and  in  the  Bible  itself  this  dire 
theme  may  be  encountered,  though  no  modern 
has  had  the  courage  to  set  the  episode  of 
Tamar  and  Amnon  in  the  Book  of  Samuel. 
Later,  in  the  flush  of  the  seventeenth-century 
dramatic  renascence,  John  Ford  wrote  his  mas- 
terpiece, The  Brother  and  Sister. 

In  that  play,  admired  of  Charles  Lamb,  is  set 
forth  with  a  wealth  of  realism  undreamed  of  by 
D'Annunzio  and  the  Greeks  the  details  of  a 
lamentable  passion,  and  so  cunning  is  the  art 
of  Ford  that  we  find  ourselves  pitying  the  un- 
happy pair,  Giovanni  and  Annabella,  poor  play- 
things of  the  gods.  Of  Wagner's  Die  Walkure 
it  is  unnecessary  to  speak.  Music,  as  Henry 
James  remarks,  is  a  great  solvent. 

But  mark  the  handling  of  the  young  Italian 
poet.  Obsessed  by  the  Greeks,  he  has  con- 
structed his  tragedy  on  antique  lines.  Crime 
is  hinted  at ;  we  even  see  an  adulterous  love  — 
for  evil  passions  hunt  in  couples  throughout  this 
dream-like  story  —  in  development ;  almost  is  a 
catastrophe  precipitated.  The  incest,  however, 
339 


ICONOCLASTS 

is  potential.  It  is  only  an  idea.  It  scourges 
the  two  men  like  whips  in  the  hands  of  the 
avenging  Furies.  And  it  finally  dooms  an 
innocent  creature,  hopelessly  involving  at  the 
same  time  the  happiness  of  three  survivors. 

It  is  then  a  crime  contemplated,  not  accom- 
plished, this  love  of  a  brother  for  a  sister.  A 
critic  might  show  that  the  Italian  poet's  form  is 
a  replica  of  the  Greek  with  several  variations  ; 
there  is  a  breach  of  unity  of  place  in  the  last 
act,  and  no  "false  catastrophe  "  is  hinted  at  in 
the  fourth  act.  This  W.  F.  Apthorp  has  pointed 
out.  It  is  not  the  sole  departure.  Instead  of 
presenting  us  with  a  frozen  imitation  of  Grecian 
tragedy,  like  most  writers  who  have  attempted 
to  cope  with  the  classics,  D'Annunzio  frankly 
filled  the  antique  mould  with  modern  feeling. 

His  men  and  women  are  modern ;  they  are 
of  to-day,  neurotic,  morbid,  febrile  souls.  And 
this  modern  atmosphere  is  a  jangling  dissonance 
to  them  that  prefer  their  tragedy  unadulterated. 
Without  an  ounce  of  John  Ford's  lusty  Eliza- 
bethan animalism,  D'Annunzio  so  contrives  his 
play  of  character  and  shock  of  incident  that  we 
are  disquieted,  dismayed,  not  so  much  by  the 
theme  as  by  its  insidious  music. 

With  his  customary  audacity  he  places  his 
action  in  Greece,  on  the  plain  of  Argolis ; 
archaeology  is  the  background.  Four  friends 
are  engaged  in  excavating  the  dead  city  of  My- 
cenae, where  Schliemann  discovered,  or  thought 
he  discovered,  the  tombs  and  dusty  bones  of  the 
340 


DUSE   AND   D'ANNUNZIO 

Homeric  heroes.  From  these  tainted  remains 
is  exhaled  the  moral  malaria  that  sets  in  action 
D'Annunzio's  piece.  It  is  a  genuinely  original 
and  morbid  idea. 

The  house  of  the  men  of  Atreus  is  dug  up, 
and  from  it  comes  spiritual  pollution.  Like 
a  master  of  string-quartet  writing  the  author 
has  manipulated  his  four  characters  so  skilfully 
that  the  melody  worked  is  ever  mysterious,  ever 
melancholy.  Anna  is  blind  ;  she  is  the  wife  of 
Alessandro,  a  poet  and  scholar.  Alessandro  is 
morally  blind,  for  he  loves  the  younger  Bianca, 
the  sister  of  his  friend  Leonardo.  Leonardo, 
the  successful  explorer  and  rifler  of  Homeric 
tombs,  loves  his  own  sister,  —  that  ancient  poi- 
son working  in  his  veins,  —  and  with  this  un- 
canny combination  D' Annunzio  plays  his  sinister 
tunes,  evokes  his  strange  harmonies. 

There  is  no  necessity  of  disputing  the  daring 
of  this  scheme,  and  just  as  inutile  would  be  a 
discussion  of  its  ethics.  It  seems  that  in  his 
three  plays,  La  Gioconda,  La  Citta  Morta,  and 
Francesca  da  Rimini,  D' Annunzio  has  tried 
his  'prentice  hand  at  modern  realism,  ancient 
tragedy,  and  historical  melodrama.  They  are 
all  three  largely  experimental,  and,  it  must  not 
be  forgotten,  the  works  of  a  beginner. 

It  is  the  externals  of  the  drama  with  which 
we  are  more  concerned.  Of  five  acts  three 
were  placed  in  the  loggia  of  Leonardo's  house ; 
Act  II  is  the  interior  of  the  same  house; 
Act  V  a  fountain  not  far  away.  It  is  then  a 


ICONOCLASTS 

soul  tragedy  that  is  enacted,  and  one  cannot 
quite  escape  the  feeling  that  much  study  of 
Maeterlinck  has  been  responsible  for  the  sullen, 
depressing  atmosphere.  There  is  in  the  dia- 
logue, with  its  haunting  repetitions,  the  same 
electric  apprehension  sensed  in  the  Belgian's 
poems.  Gestures,  movements,  the  music  of 
sonorous  speech,  slow  glances,  and  pauses  —  the 
pause  is  a  big  factor  in  Maeterlinck  —  are  woven 
into  a  sort  of  incomprehensible  symphony. 

Seemingly  subordinate,  Eleonora  Duse  is  the 
real  protagonist.  Blind,  though  not  from  birth, 
because  of  her  exquisite  tactile  sensibility  she 
understands  the  love  of  her  husband  for  her 
friend.  An  exalted  sentiment  of  renunciation 
prompts  her  to  probe  this  secret  passion,  and 
when  she  discovers  that  Bianca  is  languishing, 
too,  her  mind  is  made  up.  She  will  efface  her- 
self. She  will  slay  her  useless  life,  so  that  two 
souls  may  thrive  in  happiness.  More  than  this, 
she  tempts  her  husband  with  the  ripe  beauty  of 
Bianca.  Here  is  an  un-Greek  idea  at  once.  It 
is  altruism  gone  mad.  From  Anna  is  mercifully 
kept  the  unholy  love  of  the  brother;  nor  is  it 
revealed  to  Bianca.  Therein  lies  another  devi- 
ation from  antique  models.  A  story  in  classical 
literature  is  never  told  obliquely. 

Duse,  who  has  extraordinary  powers  of  in- 
tuition, the  logic  of  her  temperament,  imper- 
sonated Anna  with  unvarying  truth  and  veiled 
sweetness,  indicating  by  shades  almost  too  fine 
for  the  frame  of  the  theatre  her  mental  atti- 
342 


DUSE   AND    D'ANNUNZIO 

tudes  toward  her  companions.  There  are  few 
climaxes  for  her,  the  part  being  a  passive  one, 
the  action  being  buried  in  the  text.  But  she  has 
opportunities.  Her  cry  for  "  Light !  "  is  one  ; 
and  almost  at  the  drop  of  the  last 'curtain  she 
finds  her  way  to  the  fountain  where,  lured  by 
the  brother  Alessandro,  Bianca,  his  hapless  vic- 
tim, is  murdered  by  being  drowned  in  the  mur- 
muring waters  which  the  pair  have  so  often 
watched. 

Anna  utters  the  names  in  the  terrified  accents 
of  the  lost  blind.  She  seeks,  too,  her  husband. 
All  the  day  she  anticipated  tragedy.  It  hung 
over  her  soul  like  a  smoky  pall.  She  feels  her 
way  to  the  fountain  and  there  touching  with  her 
feet  the  body  of  the  dead  girl  she  distractedly 
searches  for  signs  of  life.  It  is  a  dramatic  mo- 
ment. Then  arising  with  a  shudder  she  shouts, 
joyfully :  — 

"  Vedo !  Vedo  !  "  ("  I  see !  I  see  !  ").  Her 
physical  sight  is  restored  and  her  own  hold  on 
life  becomes  at  once  intensified  ;  her  unselfish- 
ness is  shed.  And  it  is  at  this  hopeless  mo- 
ment that  the  dramatist  unseals  her  vision  and 
closes  his  play,  leaving  the  wretched  woman  to 
face  the  loss  of  Bianca  and  possibly  the  lunacy 
of  her  husband  and  his  friend.  If  they  do  not 
go  mad  it  is  because  their  nerves  have  become 
dulled  to  the  hideousness  of  life.  They  are 
abnormal;  every  one  in  the  play,  excepting 
the  girl  Bianca,  is  abnormal.  Even  the  nurse 
does  not  escape  the  taint  She  is  a  figure  out 
343 


ICONOCLASTS 

of  Maeterlinck,  and  doubtless  knows  the  mad 
ness  that  lurks  in  moon-haunted  corridors ! 

That  Duse  triumphed  was  to  be  expected. 
She  awed  rather  than  astonished  us,  her 
skill  taking  on  new  meanings,  new  colours. 
All  together,  her  art  was  a  unique  something 
that  closely  bordered  on  the  clairvoyant.  Her 
helpless  silences  were  actually  terrifying;  her 
poses  most  pathetic.  Bianca  Maria  was  admira- 
bly played  by  Signorina  Civani,  the  Sirenetta  of 
La  Gioconda.  She  noted  most  fluently  the 
loving,  healthy  nature  of  the  girl  who  falls  a 
victim  to  the  shafts  of  Eros.  It  is  with  Sopho- 
cles's  Antigone  that  the  action  begins  ;  it  is  with 
a  motto  from  Antigone,  Eros,  unconquered  in 
strife,  that  the  play  is  overshadowed. 


D'Annunzio's  new  play,  The  Daughter  of 
Jorio,  has  achieved  some  success  in  Italy,  de- 
spite the  absence  of  Eleonora  Duse  from  the 
cast,  and  despite  the  reaction  against  the  enthu- 
siasm of  its  premiere.  When  the  drama  was  pro- 
duced at  Milan  it  was  put  on  for  a  "  run,"  or  the 
European  equivalent  of  one.  There  was  severe 
criticism,  but  the  consensus  seems  to  be  that 
in  his  latest  work  that  extraordinary  creature, 
D'Annunzio,  has  outshone  his  earlier  dramatic 
efforts. 

The  chief  quality  that  impresses  itself  upon 
the  reader  of  La  Figlia  di  Jorio  is  its  superior 
344 


DUSE   AND    D'ANNUNZIO 

dramatic  movement  as  compared,  for  example, 
with  The  Dead  City  or  Francesca  da  Rimini 
by  the  same  writer.  The  first  act  is  full  of 
vitality,  its  characterization  excellent ;  the  cuts 
in  Acts  II  and  III  made  by  D'Annunzio  for  the 
first  performance  greatly  benefit  the  somewhat 
sluggish  tempi  of  these  scenes.  The  old  rheto- 
rician and  lover  of  beautiful  phrases  has  not 
been  killed  in  the  Italian  poet,  merely  "scotched." 
For  one  thing,  he  has  struck  that  theatrical  vein 
of  gold,  a  new  background,  new  methods  of 
speech,  new  costumes,  new  ideas  —  or,  rather, 
most  ancient  ones,  though  novel  to  the  stage. 
Travelling  with  his  friend,  the  painter  Michetti, 
one  summer  in  the  savage  mountainous  country 
of  the  Abruzzi,  D'Annunzio  saturated  himself 
with  his  accustomed  receptivity  to  a  strange 
people  and  environment,  which  has  resulted  in 
a  powerful  tragedy.  Like  Verga's  discovery  of 
the  Sicilian  peasant  in  Cavalleria  Rusticana  —  a 
veritable  treasure-trove  for  that  poet  and  also  for 
Mascagni — D'Annunzio  in  his  encounter  with 
the  curious  customs  and  pagan  personalities  of 
the  hardy,  superstitious  Abruzzi,  was  enabled  to 
lay  up  a  stock  of  images  for  his  new  work.  I 
doubt,  however,  if  he  has  succeeded  as  well  as 
Verga  in  getting  close  to  the  skin  and  soil  of  this 
peasantry.  There  is  more  than  one  awkward 
hiatus  in  The  Daughter  of  Jorio,  and  an  almost 
epileptic  intensity  in  the  development  of  the 
witch  girl's  character. 

The  first  act  is  the  best,  because  the  simplest 
3.45, 


ICONOCLASTS 

and  most  sincere.  It  shows  us  a  living  room  in 
a  rustic  house.  The  background  and  "  proper- 
ties "  are  said  to  be  wonderfully  realistic.  Aligi, 
the  shepherd,  is  to  marry.  His  bride's  name  is 
Vienda.  He  does  not  love  her,  for  she  was 
chosen  by  his  parents  —  and  in  this  old  Italian 
land  the  father's  command  is  law.  The  be- 
trothal ceremonies  are  beginning.  The  groom's 
sisters  are  near  by.  He  is  ill  at  ease,  for  he  has 
been  dreaming  strange  dreams.  Vienda  spills 
the  broken  bread  of  betrothal  from  her  lap  upon 
the  floor.  It  is  a  maleficent  sign.  Suddenly 
there  comes  a  noise  of  shouting  and  music.  The 
harvesters,  crazy  with  drink  and  the  torrid  heat 
of  the  sun,  rush  in.  They  have  come  to  cele- 
brate. They  are  also  chasing  a  human  being,  a 
miserable  hunted  girl  of  bad  repute,  the  daugh- 
ter of  Jorio,  the  magician.  Hunted  down,  she 
claims  sanctuary  in  the  household.  Although 
she  is  of  ill-fame,  although  Aligi's  father,  La- 
zaro,  has  been  wounded  in  a  squabble  about  this 
girl,  Mila  di  Codra,  she  is  sheltered  by  the 
woman.  Aligi  is  for  turning  her  away;  her 
coming  spells  more  bad  luck ;  the  infuriated 
mob  without  demand  admittance.  Enraged,  the 
shepherd  raises  his  staff  to  strike  the  unhappy 
fugitive.  As  he  does  this  he  is  overtaken  by 
fresh  visions ;  he  thinks  he  sees  Mila  guarded 
by  a  weeping  angel.  He  falls  at  her  feet  beg- 
ging her  pardon.  A  cross  is  laid  over  the 
threshold,  a  litany  sung  by  his  sisters,  and  the 
angry  reapers  are  hypnotized.  They  enter 
346 


DUSE   AND    D'ANNUNZIO 

singly,  kiss  the  cross,  and  dissolve  homeward. 
Lazaro  enters  with  his  head  in  a  bandage  and 
Mila  escapes.  Another  ill  omen  —  the  father 
and  son  both  love  the  same  woman. 

The  second  act  discovers  Aligi  and  Mila  in  a 
mountainous  cave  where  they  have  lived  for  six 
months  —  in  a  state  of  innocence.  Here  the 
credulity  of  the  spectator  is  taxed,  and  the  lyric 
ecstasy  of  the  poet  waxes.  It  is  nevertheless  an 
idyllic  episode.  One  kiss  is  exchanged,  the  first 
and  the  last,  for  Lazaro  eventually  finds  his  now 
disgraced  son,  and  with  a  pair  of  sturdy  rustics 
comes  to  carry  away  the  witch.  In  the  conflict 
that  ensues  the  son  murders  the  father.  Act 
III  brings  us  back  to  the  old  home  of  Aligi. 
His  father's  corpse  lies  in  the  garden,  according 
to  custom.  The  son  is  condemned  to  the  awful 
death  of  the  parricide  —  after  his  offending  hand 
is  cut  off  he  is  to  be  tied  in  a  sack  with  a  fierce 
dog  and  then  thrown  into  the  river.  The  end 
may  be  surmised.  One  consolation  is  not  denied 
him  —  a  cup  of  drink  to  induce  forgetfulness. 
As  the  preparations  are  about  completed  Mila 
bursts  upon  the  crowded  scene  —  an  impressive 
one,  according  to  printed  reports  —  and  takes 
upon  herself  the  blame  of  the  affair.  She  it 
was,  she  declares,  who  murdered  Lazaro.  Aligi 
curses  her  in  his  delirium,  as  she  is  dragged 
away  to  be  burnt  alive,  she  the  witch,  the 
daughter  of  Jorio.  Her  triumphant  voice  is 
heard  to  the  last,  while  for  a  background  there 
is  the  chanting  of  the  requiem  and  the  trium- 
347 


ICONOCLASTS 

phant  yelling  and  imprecations  of  the  shepherds, 
the  Abruzzi  lusting  for  a  human  sacrifice.  Then 
the  curtain  falls.  Several  critics  discern  in  all 
this  the  triumph  of  religion  over  the  senses  —  a 
solution  that  does  their  ingenuity  credit,  though 
far  from  convincing. 

It  may  be  seen  that  there  is  real  dramatic 
worth  in  the  play,  love  and  sacrifice  being  its 
very  pith.  Better  still,  the  poet  has  become 
less  self-absorbed  and  consequently  more  objec- 
tive. The  human  note  predominates  in  this 
wild  and  highly  coloured  music.  In  his  plays 
and  novels  and  verse  he  has  himself  been  the 
artistic  and  sterile  hero  —  as  Eleonora  Duse,  in 
the  plays  and  one  novel,  their  heroine.  A  Ger- 
man critic  declares  that  Mila  is  only  a  sister  of 
the  crazy  woman  in  A  Spring  Morning's  Dream 
—  as  she,  Duse,  also  is  related  to  Silvia  in  Gio 
con  da,  to  the  blind  wife  in  The  Dead  City,  and 
Francesca,  as  well  as  La  Foscarina  in  Fuoco, 
Duse,  Eleonora  Duse,  always  Duse.  Lucky, 
thrice  happy  poet,  to  have  been  inspired  by  such 
a  model !  To  have  had  the  opportunity  of  study- 
ing such  a  sublime,  unhappy  soul  as  is  Duse's  ! 

A  German  critic  speaks  slightingly  of  Das 
Geklingel  der  schonen  Phrasen  —  the  jingling 
of  dulcet  phrases  —  as  a  drawback  to  the  action. 
Doubtless  this  is  true.  Often  we  cannot  hear 
the  play  because  of  the  words.  The  chief  thing 
to  be  remarked,  however,  is  the  improvement  in 
dramatic  spirit  and  rhythm  and  the  gratifying 
supremacy  of  the  dramatic  over  the  lyric  and 
348 


DUSE   AND   D'ANNUNZIO 

literary  qualities  —  the  latter  hitherto  anti-dra- 
matic elements  in  the  plays  of  D'Annunzio. 

The  poet  is  now  working  on  a  new  three-act 
tragedy,  The  Ship,  —  in  which  Duse  is  to  appear 
at  La  Scala  this  spring.  The  theme  is  Vene- 
tian —  that  Venice  which  both  Duse  and  D'An- 
nunzio love  so  well;  and  also  on  a  modern  drama 
entitled,  The  Light  Under  the  Bushel. 


349 


XI 

VILLIERS    DE   L'ISLE    ADAM 

"!N  life,"  said  Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  "we  are 
strangled  between  two  doors,  of  which  the  one 
is  labelled  Too  Soon  and  the  other  Too  Late." 
The  brilliant  Beau  Brummel  of  French  literature 
who  uttered  this  fatidical  speech  was  a  contem- 
porary of  the  unhappy,  impulsive  man  of  genius, 
poet,  mystic,  and  dramatist,  who  set  Paris  agog 
with  his  novels,  short  stories,  plays,  his  half- 
crazy  conduct,  his  epigrams,  his  fantastic  litiga- 
tions, and  his  cruel  death  —  Villiers  de  1'Isle 
Adam.  The  bosom  friend  of  Charles  Baudelaire 
and  Richard  Wagner,  petted  at  Bayreuth,  feted 
in  Paris,  nevertheless  he  died  in  want,  was  buried 
by  his  friends,  and  was  proud,  lonely,  aristocratic 
to  the  very  end  —  a  death  from  cancer. 

His  life  furnishes  material  for  one  of  his  ironic, 
bitter,  disturbing  tales.  Born  in  Brittany,  No- 
vember 28,  1838,  he  died  at  Paris  in  a  religious 
hospital,  August  19,  1889.  A  fierce,  even  mili- 
tant, Roman  Catholic  —  he  dedicated  a  book  to 
the  Pope  —  he  shocked  his  coreligionists  by  the 
confusing  mixture  of  fanatical  piety  and  fantas- 
tic blasphemy  which  winds  through  his  bizarre 
works.  He  is  best  known  to  Americans  by  the 
350 


VILLIERS   DE   L'ISLE   ADAM 

story  in  his  Contes  Cruels,  entitled,  The  Torture 
by  Hope,  which  recalls  Poe  at  his  best,  the  Poe 
of  The  Pit  and  the  Pendulum.  His  little  play, 
The  Revolt,  was  translated  and  first  appeared  in 
the  Fortnightly  Review,  December,  1897.  Arthur 
Symons  has  translated  a  poem,  Aveu,  and  Vance 
Thompson,  in  the  defunct  pages  of  Mile.  New 
York,  wrote  often  of  the  celebrated  Frenchman. 

The  critical  bibliography  of  Villiers  de  1'Isle 
Adam  is  not  a  vast  one.  There  is,  besides  his 
principal  works,  only  his  life  by  his  cousin 
Vicomte  Robert  du  Pontavice  de  Heussey;  Remy 
de  Gourmont's  brief,  sympathetic  notice  in  his 
inimitable  Le  Livre  des  Masques ;  Anatole 
France  in  La  Vie  Litte"raire  has  dealt  with  the 
poet  most  subtly,  as  is  his  wont ;  Arthur  Sy- 
mons's  study  ;  Mallarm^'s  lecture  ;  a  few  carica- 
tures and  a  sketch  by  Paul  Verlaine ;  a  historic 
consideration  by  Alexis  von  Kraemer,  translated 
from  the  Finnish ;  a  charming  and  extended 
e"tude  by  Gustave  Kahn ;  short  essays  by  the 
lamented  Hennequin,  by  J.  K.  Huysmans,  in  A 
Rebours,  by  Sarcey,  Gustave  Guiches,  Henry 
Bordeaux,  Teodor  de  Wyzewa,  Georges  Roden- 
back,  Catulle  Mendes  ;  and  fragmentary  accounts 
in  the  ever  valuable  Mercnre  de  France — and 
there  the  list  is  snuffed  out. 

Not  precisely  dissolute,  rather  disorganized, 
the  life  of  Adam  could  be  transformed  into  an 
object  sermon  by  the  wily  educator  and  moral- 
monger.  But  that  would  be  a  poor  way  of  view- 
ing it.  Born  without  average  will  power,  except 
351 


ICONOCLASTS 

the  will  to  imagine  beautiful  and  strange  things, 
Villiers,  as  he  is  generally  called,  all  his  years 
fought  the  contending  impulses  of  his  dual  na- 
ture ;  fought  bravely  sometimes  in  the  open  air 
with  the  blue  sky  smiling  down  on  him ;  fought 
as  if  facing  an  ambuscade  at  dark,  and  under 
the  lowering  clouds  when  all  the  powers  of  evil 
were  abroad  and  at  his  elbow.  Then,  he  was 
what  Bayard  Taylor  called  Edgar  Poe  —  a  bird 
of  the  night ;  a  prowling  noctambulist ;  a  fever- 
ish being,  whose  violent  gestures,  burning  eyes, 
and  irresolute  somnambulistic  gait  told  the  tale, 
the  damnable  and  thrice-told  tale,  of  wasted 
genius. 

Poe  is  the  literary  ancestor  of  nearly  all  the 
Parnassian  and  Diabolic  groups  —  ah,  this  mania 
for  schools  and  groups  and  movements  in  Paris ! 
Poe  begat  Baudelaire  and  Baudelaire  begat  Bar- 
bey  d'Aurevilly  and  Villiers  de  1'Isle  Adam,  and 
the  last-named  begat  Verlaine  and  Huysmans  — 
and  a  long  chain  of  other  gifted  men  can  claim 
these  two  as  parents,  even  to  Mallarm6,  De  Mau- 
passant, and  Henri  de  Regnier  (who  has  read 
the  Horla  of  Guy  de  Maupassant  will  feel  that 
therein  the  unhappy  disciple  of  Flaubert  has 
raised  to  a  terrifying  degree  the  methods  of 
Poe ;  nor  must  Regnier's  La  Canne  de  Jaspe  be 
forgotten).  But  they  all  come  from  Poe ;  Poe, 
who  influenced  Swinburne  through  Baudelaire ; 
Poe,  who  nearly  swept  the  young  Maeterlinck 
from  his  moorings  in  the  stagnant  fens  and 
under  the  morose  sky  of  his  lowlands.  If  we 
352 


VILLIERS    DE   L'ISLE   ADAM 

have  no  great  school  of  literature  in  America,  we 
;an  at  least  point  to  Poe  as  the  progenitor  of  a 
half-dozen  continental  literatures. 

Villiers  can  be  traced  to  Poe  on  one  side,  just 
as  Chateaubriand  is  another  of  his  ancestors. 
M.  de  Gourmont  deplores  the  criticism  which 
would  detach  Villiers  from  his  time  and  isolate 
him  as  a  species  of  intellectual  monster.  There 
is  much  that  is  fantastic,  even  bizarre,  in  his 
work,  and  he  never  escaped  the  besetting  sin  of 
his  associates,  headed  by  Baudelaire,  the  childish 
desire  to  tpater  le  bourgeois,  to  shock  conven- 
tional morality  and  manners  by  eccentric  behav- 
iour, outrageous  speech,  and  paradoxical  writings. 
This  legacy  of  the  romantic  movement  of  1830 
really  came  across  the  water  in  Byron's  poses 
of  wickedness  and  heroic  mystifications.  It  was, 
in  reality,  the  Byronic  attitude  transposed  to  the 
Paris  boulevards.  Gautier  wore  a  pink  doublet 
(not  scarlet,  he  says),  and  it  was  elevated  to  a 
symbol.  Let  us  be  scarlet,  said  these  wild,  young 
fellows,  let  our  sins  be  splendid  !  And  then  the 
crew  would  wander  abroad,  making  the  night 
resound  with  their  lyric  outbursts,  happy  if  a 
respectable  citizen  were  scandalized,  and  in  their 
pockets,  a  world  too  wide  for  their  money,  hardly 
the  price  of  a  bottle ! 

It  was  glorious,  and  it  was  art.  But  who 
cared,  who  knew  ?  If  a  man  of  Baudelaire's 
intellectual  powers,  a  profound  critic,  genius, 
and  poet,  could  dye  his  hair  green,  simply 
to  attract  attention  in  the  cafes  why  should 
353 


ICONOCLASTS 

not  men  of  lesser  abilities  follow  suit  and 
commit  all  manner  of  extravagant  pranks  ? 
Leconte  de  Lisle,  impeccable  poet  and  a  prim 
sort  of  person,  impatiently  exclaimed  :  "  Oh,  ces 
jeunes  gens !  Tous  fumistes  !  "  And  Thiers 
allowed  to  escape  him  the  one  mot  of  his  com- 
placent life  worth  remembering,  "  The  Roman- 
ticists—  that's  the  Commune!"  Perhaps  the 
pink  doublets  and  strange  oaths  of  Ernani  and 
1830  were  transformed  into  the  grim  figures  of 
that  later  lurid  epoch. 

Villiers  was  in  the  very  core  of  this  artistic 
Paris.  He  slept  all  day  —  or  dreamed.  At 
nightfall  he  stepped  across  the  sill  of  his  door, 
and  when  he  had  friends,  money,  glory,  he 
dined  at  Brabant's ;  when  he  was  shabby,  he 
remained  on  the  exterior  boulevard.  There, 
in  some  modest  cafe,  seated  at  a  table  sur- 
rounded by  disciples  eager  for  his  ideas,  his 
poetry,  his  scintillating  wit,  —  eager  to  steal  it 
and  sell  it  as  their  own,  —  the  Master  spoke,  his 
vague  blue  eyes  gleaming,  his  long  white  hand 
waving  aloft  like  a  flag  of  revolt.  What  dreams, 
what  eloquence,  what  a  soul,  went  under  on  this 
ignoble  battle-field !  What  slain  ideals  and  poetry 
wasted  in  the  very  utterance,  and  what  inroads 
on  a  nervous,  sickly  constitution !  But  Villiers 
lived  the  life  he  had  elected.  He  was  poor, 
always  poor,  and  poverty  makes  extraordinary 
bedfellows.  But  —  his  room-mates  were  the 
most  intellectual  spirits  of  modern  France.  If 
Baudelaire  could  not  drop  in  on  him  at  his  dusty 
354 


VILLIERS   DE   L'ISLE   ADAM 

lodgings,  Richard  Wagner  would.  And  so  there 
was  talk  —  such  talk  —  and  there  was  that 
feeling  of  expansion,  of  liberation,  which  comes 
when  a  man  like  Turgenev  could  say  to  Flau- 
bert :  "  Cheer  up,  old  fellow  !  After  all  you  are 
Flatibert !  " 

Villiers  never  forgot  that  he  was  Villiers.  His 
pride,  like  his  piety,  was  Luciferian.  Nobly  de- 
scended, he  almost  fought  a  duel  with  a  distant 
cousin  who  doubted  his  birth.  He  claimed  to 
spring  from  the  ten  times  blue  blood  of  a 
Grand  Master  of  the  Order  of  Saint  John  of 
Jerusalem,  who  defended  Rhodes  against  the 
Turks  in  the  time  of  Charles  V.  With  this 
thought  he  often  wandered  into  a  cafe  and  had 
his  absinthe  charged  on  the  slate  of  the  ideal, 
the  reckoning  of  which  no  true  poet  listeth. 

A  mystic  among  mystics,  yet  his  linen  was 
not  always  impeccable.  Verlaine,  another  son 
of  the  stars  and  sewers,  wrote,  "  I  am  far  from 
sure  that  the  philosophy  of  Villiers  will  not 
one  day  become  the  formula  of  our  century." 
"  Know,  once  and  for  all,  that  there  is  for  thee 
no  other  universe  than  that  conception  which  is 
reflected  at  the  bottom  of  thy  thoughts  "  —  this 
utterance  of  Villiers  is  the  keystone  of  his  sys- 
tem. In  Elen  (1864),  his  greatest  drama,  an- 
other idea  comes  to  the  surface  in  the  dialogue 
of  Samuel  and  Goetze.  Samuel  speaks  :  "  Sci- 
ence will  not  suffice.  Sooner  or  later  you  will 
end  by  coming  to  your  knees."  Goetze :  "  Be- 
fore what  ? "  Samuel :  "  Before  the  darkness." 
355 


ICONOCLASTS 

His  life  long,  Villiers  traversed  the  darkness 
which  encompasses  with  the  sure,  swift  step 
of  a  nyctalops,  one  who  can  pierce  with  his 
glance  the  deepest  obscurity.  So  it  is  that  in 
his  plays  and  stories  we  are  conscious  of  the 
great  mystery  of  life  and  death  hemming  us 
about.  Sometimes  this  atmosphere  is  morbidly 
oppressive,  sometimes  it  is  relieved  by  gay, 
maniacal  bursts  of  laughter.  Again  it  lifts 
and  reveals  the  mild  heavens  streaked  with 
menacing  irony.  There  is  a  lugubrious  under- 
current in  the  buffooneries  of  Villiers.  Philip 
Hale  has  translated  the  cruel  story  of  the  swans 
massacred  by  fear.  This  poet  slew  his  soul  by 
his  evocation  of  terror. 

He  is  a  mystic,  a  spiritual  romantic,  and  only 
a  realist  in  his  sardonic  pictures  of  Paris  life, 
tiny  cabinet  pictures,  etchings,  bitten  out  with 
the  aqua  fortis  of  his  ghastly  irony.  There  is 
the  irony,  a  mask  behind  which  pity,  sympathy, 
lurk;  Shakespeare  wore  this  mask  at  times. 
And  there  is  the  irony  that  withers,  that  blasts. 
This  is  Villiers. 

Axel  is  both  difficult  and  illuminative  reading. 
It  is  in  four  acts  with  nine  scenes.  Each  act 
or  part  is  respectively  entitled :  The  Religious 
World,  The  Tragic  World,  The  Occult  World, 
The  Passional  World.  The  poet  had  not  known 
Wagner  and  his  Tetralogy  for  naught.  Sara  is 
a  superb  creation — but  not  on  the  boards,  in  the 
disillusioning,  depoetizing,  troubled,  and  malarial 
air  of  the  stage !  It  was  a  mistake  to  play  Axe' 
356 


VILLIERS    DE   L'ISLE   ADAM 

in  Paris.  Its  solemn  act  of  rejection  of  life  at 
the  moment  "  when  life  becomes  ideal"  is  hardly 
fitting  for  the  theatre.  A  drama  to  be  played 
by  poets  before  a  parterre  of  poets !  Arthur 
Symons  has  noticed  with  his  accustomed  acuity 
that  "  the  modern  drama  under  the  democratic 
influence  of  Ibsen,  the  positive  influence  of 
Dumas  fils,  has  limited  itself  to  the  expression 
of  temperaments  in  the  one  case,  of  theoretic 
intelligences  in  the  other,  in  as  nearly  as  possi- 
ble the  words  which  the  average  man  would  use 
for  the  statement  of  his  emotions  and  ideas. 
The  form,  that  is,  is  degraded  below  the  level 
of  the  characters  whom  it  attempts  to  express." 

It  is  a  point  well  taken,  though  I  feel  inclined 
to  rebel  at  the  pinning  down  of  form  to  language 
alone.  Ibsen's  terseness  —  and  remember  we 
only  see  him  in  the  cold  light  of  Mr.  Archer's 
translations  —  is  one  of  his  merits  ;  but  his  form, 
his  dramatic  form,  is  not  alone  in  his  text,  but 
in  the  serene  and  ordered  procession  of  his 
dramatic  action.  Villiers  is  more  poetically 
eloquent  than  the  Ibsen  of  the  prose  dramas. 
But  as  logical  or  as  dramatic  — ! 

Mr.  Symons  adds,  "  La  Revolte,  which  seems 
to  anticipate  A  Doll's  House,  shows  us  an 
aristocratic  Ibsen,  touching  reality  with  a  cer- 
tain disdain,  certainly  with  far  less  skill,  cer- 
tainly with  far  more  beauty."  For  me  in  a  play 
of  character  the  beauty  that  appeals  is  not 
purely  verbal.  It  is  the  beauty  of  character  qua 
character,  and  the  beauty  of  events  marshalled 
357 


ICONOCLASTS 

like  a  great  sequence  of  mysterious  music,  hum- 
ming with  the  indefinable  harmonies  of  life. 
Ibsen  makes  this  music ;  so  does  Gerhart 
Hauptmann.  Axel  is  noble  drama,  despite  its 
formal  shortcoming,  its  dream-like  quality. 
Many  went  begging  to  Villiers,  and  few  came 
away  empty-handed.  Prodigal  in  genius,  he 
was  prodigal  in  giving. 

This  poet,  like  most  poets,  loathed  medioc- 
rity. He  sought  the  exceptional,  the  complex 
soul.  "A  chacun  son  infini,"  he  said;  and  in 
Axel  he  cries  :  "  As  for  living,  our  servants  will 
do  that  for  us!  As  at  the  play  in  a  central 
stall,  one  sits  out  so  as  not  to  disturb  one's 
neighbours  —  out  of  courtesy,  in  a  word  —  some 
play  written  in  a  wearisome  style  of  which  one 
does  not  like  the  subject,  so  I  lived,  out  of 
politeness."  Here  is  the  gauge  cast  disdain- 
fully to  those  who  forever  pelt  us  with  sweet 
phrases  about  loving  our  neighbour,  about 
altruism,  sympathy,  and  social  obligations  —  all 
the  self-illuding,  socialistic  cant,  in  a  word,  that 
rankles  in  the  breast  of  the  solitary  proud  man 
and  poisons  the  mind  of  the  weak.  Villiers  is 
the  exorcist  of  the  real,  the  bearer  of  the  ideal, 
wrote  De  Gourmont,  himself  a  poetic  individ- 
ualist. And  he  sums  up,  "  Villiers  knew  all 
forms  of  intellectual  intoxication." 

Villiers  associated  much  with  Richard  Wag- 
ner, and  with  Baudelaire  was  an  ardent  upholder 
of  the  new  music  during  the  troubled  times  of 
the  Tannhauser  fiasco.  He  played  the  piano, 
358 


VILLIERS   DE   L'ISLE  ADAM 

knew  the  Ring  by  heart  —  no  mean  feat  —  and 
set  Baudelaire's  poems  to  music,  anticipating 
Charles  Martin  Loeffler  by  nearly  a  half-cen- 
tury. Of  one  of  them  the  music  is  said  to  be 
still  extant.  It  is  the  poem  with  this  couplet :  — 

Our  beds  shall  be  scented  with  sweetest  perfume, 
Our  divans  be  as  cool  and  dark  as  the  tomb. 

Probably  the  most  lifelike,  verbal  portrait  of 
Wagner  is  that  of  Villiers's.  In  a  memorable 
passage,  which  I  commend  to  Mr.  Finck  as  testi- 
mony with  which  to  snub  recalcitrant  clergy- 
men and  others,  Villiers  notes  Wagner's  violent 
disclaimer  that  his  Parsifal  was  merely  the 
work  of  the  artist  and  not  of  the  believing 
Christian.  "  Why,  if  I  did  not  feel  in  my 
inmost  soul  the  living  light  and  love  of  that 
Christian  faith,  my  works  .  .  .  would  be  the 
works  of  a  liar  and  an  ape.  My  art  is  my 
prayer."  Thus  Villiers  reports  Wagner  —  Wag- 
ner, whose  marvellous  soul  changed  colour  every 
moment,  like  one  of  those  exquisite  flying  fishes 
which  paint  the  air  and  waters  of  the  tropics. 

In  1 86 1,  at  Baudelaire's  home,  Villiers  met 
Richard  Wagner.  It  was  at  a  period  of  great 
depression  for  that  master.  Villiers  speaks  of 
the  interview  as  the  most  memorable  of  his  life. 
"  Wagner,  with  his  high,  remarkable  forehead, 
almost  terrifying  in  its  development ;  his  deep 
blue  eyes,  with  their  slow,  steady,  magnetic 
glance;  his  thin,  strongly  marked  features, 
changing  from  one  shade  of  pallor  to  another; 
359 


ICONOCLASTS 

his  imperious  hooked  nose;  his  delicate,  thin- 
lipped,  unsatisfied,  ironic  mouth ;  his  exceed- 
ingly strong,  projecting,  and  pointed  chin — • 
seemed  to  Villiers  like  the  archangel  of  celestial 
combat.''  A  rare  little  band,  composed  of  Wag- 
ner,  Villiers,  Baudelaire,  and  Catulle  Mendes, 
often  walked  the  town  after  midnight.  Once 
they  were  down  along  a  dreary  street  which 
ends  at  the  Quai  Saint- Eustache,  and  there 
Wagner  pointed  out  to  them  the  window  of  a 
garret  at  the  top  of  a  very  high  house.  In  it 
he  said  he  almost  starved,  despaired,  even  medi- 
tated suicide.  Villiers  was  a  Wagnerian  among 
Wagnerians.  He  paraphrased  in  words  his  im- 
pressions of  the  German's  music,  and  some  of 
these  were  published  in  Catulle  Mendes's  Revue 
Fantaisiste.  He  visited  Wagner  at  Triebchen, 
near  Lucerne,  in  Switzerland,  although  he  was 
so  poor  that  he  had  to  walk  part  of  the  distance. 
One  of  Villiers's  characters  was  Triboulat  Bon- 
homet.  This  was  the  man  who  was  so  avid  of 
new  sensations  in  music  that  he  cruelly  slew 
swans.  During  the  autumn  of  1879  Villiers  was 
at  Bayreuth  in  company  with  Judith  Gautier 
and  Catulle  Mendes,  and  gave  a  reading  from 
his  works  before  a  lot  of  crowned  heads,  Wag- 
ner and  Liszt  included.  He  read  some  of  the 
curious  adventures  of  Bonhomet,  and  was  sur- 
prised to  hear  his  audience  laugh,  at  first  quietly, 
at  last  unrestrainedly.  At  last  the  tempest  of 
laughter  rose  so  high  that  the  reader  ceased  and 
cast  a  glance  full  of  vague  suspicion  round  hia 
360 


VILLIERS   DE   L'ISLE   ADAM 

audience.  The  Grand  Duke  of  Saxe-Weimar, 
who  sat  beside  him,  touched  his  shoulder  and 
pointed  to  a  person  sitting  just  opposite  them. 
Villiers,  with  a  little  sharp  cry,  dropped  the 
manuscript  from  his  trembling  fingers  and  gave 
evident  signs  of  lively  terror.  There  in  front 
of  him,  surrounded  by  a  bevy  of  beautiful 
women,  gazing  at  him  with  shining  eyes,  his 
enormous  mouth  opened  in  stentorian  laughter, 
his  huge  hands  leading  applause,  was  Dr.  Tri- 
boulat  Bonhomet  himself,  flesh  and  bone.  It 
was  Franz  Liszt ! 

From  the  very  first  line  of  the  manuscript,  in 
which  Villiers  had  minutely  described  the  doctor, 
the  whole  audience  had  been  struck  by  the  resem- 
blance between  the  great  pianist  and  Triboulat 
Bonhomet,  and  as  the  description  went  on  the 
likeness  increased  —  dress,  gestures,  habits,  all 
bore  a  striking  similarity.  One  person  alone 
did  not  perceive  the  identity,  and  he  laughed 
louder  than  the  rest  —  Liszt  himself.  Finally 
the  reading  had  to  be  stopped  on  account  of 
the  general  hilarity,  but  Liszt  was  never  told 
of  the  joke. 

The  most  curious  episode  in  the  life  of  Villiers 
was  when  he  won  a  prize  with  his  five-act  play, 
The  New  World.  A  dramatic  competition  was 
announced  by  the  theatrical  press  of  Paris.  A 
medal  of  honour  and  ten  thousand  francs  were 
offered  to  the  French  dramatic  author  who 
would  "  most  powerfully  recall  in  a  work  of 
four  or  five  acts  the  episode  of  the  proclaim- 


ICONOCLASTS 

tion  of  the  independence  of  the  United  States, 
the  hundredth  anniversary  of  which  fell  on 
July  4,  1876.  The  two  examining  juries  were 
composed  as  follows  :  the  first,  of  the  principal 
critics  of  the  French  theatrical  press;  the 
second,  of  Victor  Hugo,  honorary  president ; 
Emile  Augier,  Octave  Feuillet,  and  Ernest 
Legouve",  members  of  the  French  Academy; 
Mr.  Grenville  Murray,  representing  the  New 
York  Herald,  and  M.  Perrin,  administrator-gen- 
eral of  the  Theatre  Frangais." 

Villiers's  play  conquered.  His  New  World 
was  passed  by  both  juries.  But  through  some 
sort  of  official  devilry  he  received  neither  money 
nor  medal ;  nor  was  his  play  produced.  He 
had  the  mortification  of  seeing  a  second-rate 
piece  by  Armand  d'Artois  given  while  his  own 
work  collected  dust  in  the  manuscript  box  of 
the  Porte-Saint-Martin  Theatre.  Naturally  he 
raised  a  hubbub.  He  bearded  the  venerable 
Hugo  at  his  home  and  there  insulted  not  only 
the  poet,  but  also  the  aged  Legouve\  Conflict  was 
the  very  breath  of  this  visionary's  nostrils.  Did 
he  not  institute  a  ridiculous  lawsuit  against  the 
author  of  a  play  because  it  vilified,  so  he  claimed, 
a  very  remote  ancestor  ?  After  interminable 
processes  he  was  non-suited.  And  The  New 
World  was  his  favourite  drama  !  Villiers  had 
long  dreamed  of  becoming  the  Richard  Wagner 
of  the  drama. 

His  cousin  says:  "His  idea  was  that  the 
characteristics  of  the  nation,  or  of  the  event 
362 


VILLIERS    DE  L'ISLE   ADAM 

which  was  to  be  portrayed,  should  be  imported 
into  the  framework  of  some  personal  intrigue, 
in  which  each  individual  of  the  dramatis  persona 
should  personify  in  his  language,  attitude,  or 
actions  some  one  of  the  numerous  elements  pro- 
duced by  the  friction  of  the  incidents  of  the 
play."  Here  is  the  leading  motive  idea  of 
Wagner  —  a  dangerous  idea  in  the  drama,  where 
the  pattern  must  not  be  too  regular  or  too  per- 
sistent. Viiliers  dreamed  of  a  symphonic  drama 
with  a  densely  woven  web.  Poets  seldom  realize 
the  bigness  of  that  hollow  frame,  the  theatre, 
on  the  background  of  which  they  must  paint  in 
bold,  splashing  colours,  or  else  pay  the  penalty 
of  not  being  seen  at  all.  It  is  scene,  not  minia- 
ture, painting  which  is  the  real  art  of  the  drama. 
In  sooth,  The  New  World  is  a  play  that  would 
puzzle  the  most  sanguine  manager.  It  has  been 
called  "  one  of  the  best  constructed,  deepest, 
and  most  passionate  dramas  of  the  present  day," 
by  a  prejudiced  witness,  the  cousin  of  the  poet. 
Against  the  wishes  of  his  true  friends,  Viiliers 
allowed  a  representation,  with  dire  results. 
Sarcey  fairly  peppered  it  with  his  wit ;  so  bad 
were  the  actors  and  actresses  that  the  author 
himself  hissed  furiously  at  every  performance. 
This  was  at  the  Theatre  des  Nations,  1883. 
There  were  six  representations.  And  such  an 
America  as  this  poet  depicts  !  It  is  as  illusory, 
in  another  way,  as  Victor  Hugo's  England. 
Viiliers  had  evidently  read  Chateaubriand's 
Atala — Chateaubriand,  who  cajoled  his  country- 
363 


ICONOCLASTS 

men  into  the  belief  that  he  lived  for  years  in 
Louisiana !  —  and  so  we  are  given  some  odd 
characters,  odd  happenings,  odder  history. 
Mistress  Andrews,  the  heroine,  is  a  sort  of  an 
American  Melusina.  Can  any  one  in  his  most 
exalted  mood  picture  an  American  Melusina  ? 

And  so  this  "  hybrid,  complex,  contradictory 
being,  by  turns  mysterious,  terrible,  cynical, 
innocent,  loving,  tragic,  grotesque  "  poet,  rolled 
down  the  hill  of  life.  Is  it  not  Pascal  who  says  : 
"  The  last  act  is  always  tragedy,  whatever  fine 
comedy  there  may  have  been  in  the  rest  of  life. 
We  must  all  die  alone  "  ?  Villiers  was  lonely 
and  dying  from  his  youth.  Death  was  his  inti- 
mate companion,  sometimes  a  boon  one,  but 
oftener  a  consoling  friend.  The  death's-head 
adorns  his  wassail  time.  Yet  this  poet  actually 
went  into  politics,  was  a  candidate  at  the  elec- 
tions of  the  Conseil  Ge'ne'ral,  and  was,  luckily 
enough,  defeated.  One  trembles  at  the  idea  of 
this  aristocratic  anarch  among  the  bleating  law- 
makers. It  is  characteristic  of  him  that  he  ac- 
cepted his  defeat  calmly  because  his  opponent 
was  De  Heredia  the  poet.  Noblesse  oblige! 

Villiers,  like  most  European  poets,  had  formed 
a  mighty  ideal  of  America  and  the  Americans. 
He  believed  this  country  and  its  institutions  to 
be  what  Thomas  Paine,  Jefferson,  and  a  few 
other  genuine  patriots  hoped  it  would  be.  He 
entertained  for  Thomas  Edison  the  deepest  ad- 
miration. His  novel,  a  grotesque  book,  The 
Eve  of  the  Future,  contains  a  fanciful  account 
364 


VILLIERS    DE   L'ISLE   ADAM 

of  Menlo  Park  and  its  "terrifying  proprietor." 
When  Edison  went  to  the  Paris  exhibition  in 
1889  he  became  acquainted  with  Villiers's  novel. 
He  read  it  at  a  sitting  and  expressed  himself 
thus  :  "That  man  is  greater  than  I.  I  can  only 
invent.  He  creates."  He  did  not  meet  the 
author,  who  was  mortally  ill,  though  an  attempt 
was  made  to  bring  the  Frenchman  and  Ameri- 
can together.  The  leading  motive  of  The  Eve 
of  the  Future,  pushed  to  an  ingenuity  bordering 
on  insanity,  is  the  construction  of  an  artificial 
woman  which  when  wound  up  imitates  in  every 
respect  the  daily  life  of  a  cultivated  lady ! 

J.  K.  Huysmans  became  known  to  Villiers, 
and  his  critical  recognition  of  his  genius,  tardy 
though  it  was,  was  one  of  the  few  consolations 
accorded  this  unhappy  man  by  fate.  Huysmans 
it  was  who  gently  persuaded  Villiers  to  make  a 
deathbed  marriage  and  legitimize  his  son.  His 
agony  was  intensified  by  the  fact  that  his  wife 
could  not  sign  her  name  to  the  marriage  con- 
tract, she  could  only  make  a  cross.  The  artist  in 
this  dying  man  persisted  to  the  last.  Huysmans 
with  his  omnivorous  eye  has  noted  the  sigh  that 
escaped  from  the  semi-moribund  poet. 

Thus  he  lived,  thus  he  died,  a  stranger  in  a 
strange  world.  His  plays  may  be  better  appre- 
ciated some  day.  If  Ibsen  profited  by  The  Re- 
volt, then  the  seed  of  Villiers  has  not  been  sown 
in  vain.  Nothing  reveals  Ibsen's  mastery  of 
the  dramatic  form  so  completely  as  his  treatment 
of  the  woman  who  revolts  and  leaves  her  home, 
365 


ICONOCLASTS 

when  compared  to  Villiers's  handling  of  the 
same  idea.  Elizabeth  goes  away  in  despair,  but 
to  return.  Nora  departs,  and  the  curtain  quickly 
severs  us  from  her  future,  her  "  miracle"  speech 
being  a  faint  prophecy  that  may  be  expanded 
some  day  into  a  fulfilment.  Villiers  was  perhaps 
the  pioneer;  though  revolting  women  abound 
in  Dumas,  abound  in  the  Bible,  for  that  matter ; 
but  the  specific  woman  who  puts  up  the  shutters 
of  the  shop,  and  declares  the  dissolution  of  the 
matrimonial  firm,  is  the  creation  of  Villiers. 
Ibsen  developed  the  idea,  and,  great  artist  that 
he  is,  made  of  it  a  formal  drama  of  beauty  and 
dramatic  significance — which  The  Revolt  is  not. 
There  are  many  loose  psychologic  ends  left  un- 
tied by  the  Frenchman,  and  his  conclusion  is 
dramatically  ineffectual. 

What  is  the  value  of  such  a  life,  what  its  mean- 
ings ?  may  be  asked  by  the  curious  impertinents. 
Why  select  for  study  the  character  and  career 
of  a  half-mad  mystic  ?  Simply  because  Villiers 
is  a  poet  and  not  a  politician.  It  is  because 
Villiers  is  Villiers  that  he  interests  the  student 
of  literature  and  humanity.  And  the  bravery, 
the  incomparable  bravery,  of  the  man  who  like 
Childe  Roland  blew  his  slug-horn,  dauntless  to 
the  last !  In  his  Azrael  he  uses  as  a  motto 
Hassan-ben-Sabbah's  "O  Death!  those  who 
are  about  to  live,  salute  thee."  All  the  soul  of 
Villiers  de  1'Isle  Adam  is  in  that  magnificently 
defiant  challenge ! 


366 


XII 
MAURICE    MAETERLINCK 

I 

THE  dramatical  evolution  of  Maurice  Maeter- 
linck. 

When  this  Belgian  poet,  dramatist,  mystic, 
became  known  in  America,  his  plays,  avowedly 
written  for  marionettes,  were  received  with  open- 
eyed  wonder  or  prolonged  laughter.  Any  idea 
that  he  be  taken  seriously  was  scouted  by  seri- 
ous critics,  and  the  usual  fate  befell  them  — 
well-meaning  amateurs  seized  them  as  legiti- 
mate prey.  There  is  no  denying  the  fact  that 
at  one  time  Maeterlinck  meant  for  most  people 
a  crazy  crow  masquerading  in  tail  feathers 
plucked  from  the  Swan  of  Avon. 

But  caricature  and  critical  malignity  did  not 
retard  the  growth  of  this  very  remarkable  young 
man  —  he  was  born  in  1862  —  and  presently  we 
heard  more  of  him.  After  we  had  finished  The 
Treasure  of  the  Lowly,  Wisdom  and  Destiny, 
The  Buried  Temple,  and  The  Double  Garden,  it 
was  conceded  that  a  mistake  had  been  made  just 
as  in  Browning's  case.  A  mystic — yes,  and 
one  who  had  adjusted  his  very  sensitive  scheme 
367 


ICONOCLASTS 

of  thought  to  the  practical  work-a-day  worla. 
A  Belgian  Emerson,  rather  than  a  Belgian 
Shakespeare ;  but  an  Emerson  who  had  in  him 
much  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Tonjours  Poe,  in 
any  consideration  of  modern  continental  poets. 

Maeterlinck  began  with  a  volume  of  poems 
entitled  Serres  Chaudes,  often  compared  to 
the  unrhymed,  loose  rhythmic  prose  of  Walt 
Whitman.  They  do  bear  a  certain  superficial 
resemblance  to  Whitman's  effusions,  though  not 
in  idea.  It  is  rather  a  cataloguing,  aimless  ap- 
parently, of  widely  disparate  subjects.  But  the 
substance  derives  more  from  that  extraordinary 
book  of  an  extraordinary  poet,  Les  Illuminations 
by  Arthur  Rimbaud,  than  from  the  ragged,  epi- 
cal lines  of  Whitman.  Take,  for  example,  the 
following  specimen  of  Maeterlinck's  dme  in 
Serres  Chaudes :  — 

"  One  day  there  was  a  poor  little  festival  in 
the  suburbs  of  my  soul.  They  mowed  the  hem- 
lock there  one  Sunday  morning,  and  all  the  con- 
vent virgins  saw  the  ships  pass  by  on  the  canal 
one  sunny  fast  day,  while  the  swans  suffered 
under  a  poisonous  bridge.  The  trees  were 
lopped  about  the  prison ;  medicines  were 
brought  one  afternoon  in  June  and  meals  for 
the  patients  were  spread  over  the  whole 
horizon." 

Now  read  Rimbaud,  translated  admirably  by 

Aline  Gorren :  "  As  soon  as   the   Idea   of   the 

Deluge  had  sunk  back  into  its  place,  a  rabbit 

halted  amid  the  sainfoin  and  the  small  swing- 

368 


MAURICE    MAETERLINCK 

ing  bells  and  said  its  prayers  to  the  rainbow, 
through  the  spider's  web.  .  .  .  The  caravans 
started.  And  the  splendid  hotel  was  erected 
upon  the  chaos  of  ice  and  night  at  the  Pole. 
...  In  hours  of  bitterness  I  imagine  balls  of 
sapphire,  of  metal.  I  am  master  of  the  silence. 
Why  should  the  semblance  of  a  vent-hole  seem 
to  pale  up  there  at  the  corner  of  a  vault  ? " 

Both  these  hallucinations  illustrate  what 
Remy  de  Gourmont  would  call  disassociation 
of  ideas. 

Maeterlinck  fervently  studied  the  English 
dramatic  classics.  The  result  was  wild  fer- 
ment. In  1889  he  published  Princess  Maleine, 
and  such  an  impression  did  its  whirling  words 
create  that  Octave  Mirbeau  wrote  his  famous 
article  in  the  Paris  Figaro,  August  24,  1890,  in 
the  course  of  which  he  made  this  statement, 
"  M.  Maurice  Maeterlinck  nous  a  donn6  1'oeuvre 
la  plus  geniale  de  ce  temps,  et  la  plus  extraor- 
dinaire et  la  plus  naive  aussi,  comparable  et  — 
oserai-je  le  dire  ?  —  superieure  en  beaute"  a  ce 
qu'il  y  a  de  plus  beau  dans  Shakespeare  .  .  . 
plus  tragique  que  Macbeth,  plus  extraordinaire 
en  pensee  que  Hamlet." 

Either  M.  Mirbeau,  who  has  often  played  the 
r61e  of  poet-anarchist,  had  not  read  Shakespeare 
reasonably,  or  else  he  was  indulging  in  a  pleasing 
mystification.  Ah,  that  fatal  plus,  the  uncriti- 
cal overplus,  how  it  does  jump  up  from  the  page 
smiting  the  optics  with  rude  humour  !  As  a  mat- 
ter of  sheer  fact,  Princess  Maleine  is  an  undi- 
369 


ICONOCLASTS 

gested  compound  of  Macbeth,  Hamlet,  Leaf, 
and,  as  Arthur  Symons  sagely  remarks,  with 
more  of  the  Elizabethan  violence  we  find  in 
Webster  and  Tourneur  than  in  Shakespeare. 
And  its  author  was  only  a  youth  in  his  twenties. 

However,  with  all  its  crudities,  its  imitations, 
its  impossible  melange  of  blood,  lust,  tears,  terror, 
there  are  several  elements  in  the  crazy  play 
that  indicate  latent  gifts  of  a  high  order.  The 
range,  is  narrow  and  Poe-like.  Fear  is  the  theme, 
and  a  strange  repetition  the  method  of  expres- 
sion. There  is  a  young  prince,  a  Hamlet,  who 
has  fed  on  the  art  of  the  modern  decadents. 
He  is  a  spiritual  half-brother  to  Laforgue's 
Hamlet,  shorn  of  that  ironist's  humour.  Never 
could  Prince  Hjalmar  of  the  Maeterlinck  tragedy 
utter  such  a  sublimely  ironic  soliloquy  as  La- 
forgue's, more  Shakespearian  than  Shakespeare. 

"  Alas !  poor  Yorick  !  As  one  seems  to  hear, 
in  one  little  shell,  all  the  multitudinous  roar  of 
the  ocean,  so  I  here  seem  to  perceive  the  whole 
quenchless  symphony  of  the  universal  soul,  of 
whose  echoes  this  box  was  as  the  cross-roads. 
And  do  you  imagine  a  human  race  that  would 
look  no  farther,  that  would  abide  by  this  vaguely 
immortal  sound,  which  one  hears  in  a  hollow 
:skull,  by  way  of  explanation  of  death,  by  way 
of  religion?  .  .  .  They  also  had  their  time, 
all  these  small  folk  of  history ;  learning  to  read, 
paring  their  nails,  illuminating  the  unsavoury 
lamp,  loving  every  night,  gormandizing,  vain, 
crazy  for  compliments,  kisses.  .  .  .  But  yet  — 
370 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

no  longer  to  be,  no  longer  to  be  in  it,  no  longer  to 
be  of  it !  Not  even  to  be  able  to  strain  against 
one's  human  heart,  any  afternoon  in  the  week, 
the  melancholy  of  centuries  compressed  into  one 
little  chord  upon  the  piano !  .  .  ." 

Maeterlinck's  hero,  too,  is  oppressed  by  the 
mystery  of  life.  Throughout  the  drama  the 
Fate  of  ancient  tragedy  marches  remorselessly 
through  the  doomed  palace  of  the  king. 
Thanks  to  Maeterlinck,  this  Fate  takes  on  a 
new  countenance.  A  disquieting  attack  is  made 
upon  the  nerves  by  the  repercussive  repetitions, 
the  dense  pall  of  melancholy  hanging  over  the 
place.  A  madhouse  is  a  cheerful  place  by  com- 
parison. One  king  has  slain  another  and  made 
a  beggar  outcast  of  the  Princess  royal,  Maleine. 
She  is  loved  by  and  loves  Prince  Hjalmar  —  an 
odd  transposition  of  the  sunny  passions  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet.  The  beggar  girl  becomes  maid  in 
the  palace  of  her  father's  murderer.  It  is  not  a 
happy  habitation.  The  old  King  is  senile  and 
debauched  by  Anne,  Queen  of  Jutland.  This  mis- 
creant, a  hideous  combination  of  Lady  Macbeth, 
Messaline,  and  Phaedra,  has  a  daughter  bearing 
the  pretty  name  of  Uglyane.  Poor  Uglyane ! 
She  is  beautiful,  unloved.  The  one  assignation 
of  her  life  is  defeated  by  Maleine,  who  plays  a 
cruel  trick  upon  her.  Going  to  the  fountain  — 
later  we  shall  find  that  fountains  assume  impor- 
tant rdles  in  these  plays — Maleine  meets  Hjalmar. 
Then  we  get  the  true  Maeterlinck  atmosphere. 
And  this  is  where  it  may  come  from  :  — 
371 


ICONOCLASTS 

I  looked  upon  the  scene  before  me  —  upon  the 
mere  house  and  the  simple  landscape  features  of  the 
domain,  upon  the  bleak  walls,  upon  the  vacant,  eye- 
like  windows,  upon  a  few  rank  sedges,  and  upon  a 
few  white  trunks  of  decayed  trees.  ...  I  reined  my 
horse  to  the  precipitous  brink  of  a  black  and  lurid 
tarn  that  lay  in  unruffled  lustre  by  the  dwelling  and 
gazed  down.  .  .  .  About  the  whole  mansion  and 
domain  there  hung  an  atmosphere  peculiar  to  them- 
selves and  their  immediate  vicinity;  an  atmosphere 
which  had  no  affinity  with  the  air  of  heaven,  but  which 
had  reeked  up  from  the  decayed  trees,  and  the  gray 
wall,  and  the  silent  tarn ;  a  pestilent  and  mystic  vapour, 
dull,  sluggish,  faintly  discernible,  and  leaden-hued. 

Pestilent  and  mystic  is  the  atmosphere  of 
Princess  Maleine.  The  quotation  is  from  The 
Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher.  There  is  much  of 
Poe's  dark  tarn,  of  Auber,  and  the  misty  mid- 
region  of  Weir  in  the  early  Maeterlinck. 

The  denouement  is  horrible.  Maleine  is 
strangled  by  the  Queen,  who  also  loves  Hjalmar, 
and  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  lunar  eclipse, 
thunderbolts,  a  cyclone,  meteors  that  explode, 
wounded  swans  that  fall  from  stormy  skies,  this 
night  of  strange  portents  comes  to  an  end  after 
the  prince  avenges  Maleine  by  stabbing  the 
queen  and  killing  himself.  There  is  a  dog  that 
sniffs,  scratches,  and  howls  at  the  locked  door 
of  the  murdered  princess.  Its  name  is  Pluto. 
There  are  chanting  and  spectral  nuns,  lewd 
beggars,  an  old  Shakespearian  nurse,  a  freakish 
boy,  and  the  usual  scared  courtiers.  The  scenes 
372 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

do  not  hang  together  at  all  —  there  is  no  se- 
quence of  action,  only  of  moods ;  or  rather  the 
same  mood  persists  throughout.  Yet  the  lines 
bite  at  times,  and  there  are  great  fissures  of 
silence,  pauses  as  deep  and  as  sinister  as  murky 
midnight  pools. 

These  pauses  are  always  pregnant,  —  like 
the  pauses  in  strange  pages  of  Schumann  or 
those  mysterious  empty  bars  at  the  beginning  of 
a  Chopin  tragedy  in  tone,  —  empty,  forbidding 
vestibules  to  woful  edifices. 

"  There  is  a  little  kitchen  maid's  soul  at  the 
bottom  of  her  green  eyes ;  "  "I  am  sick  to  die 
of  it  one  of  those  twenty  thousand  nights  we 
have  to  live  ;  "  "  How  dark  ?  how  dark  ?  Is  a 
forest  lit  up  like  a  ball  room  ?  "  "  The  poor 
never  know  anything ;  "  "  Will  she  not  have  a 
little  silence  in  her  heart?  "  "  She  is  as  cold  as 
an  earthworm  ;  "  "  Oh  !  look,  look  at  their  eyes. 
They  will  leap  out  upon  me  like  frogs ; "  "  My 
God  !  My  God  !  She  is  waiting  now  on  the 
wharves  of  hell ; "  "  How  unhappy  the  dead 
look  !  "  These  and  many  more,  with  gasps  and 
ejaculations,  make  up  a  dialogue  that  is  at  least 
original,  though  bizarre.  Naturally  it  is  all  the 
fruit  of  green,  immature  genius. 

The  ideas,  hysterical  and  few  as  they  are, 
begin  to  assume  some  coherence  if  compared 
with  the  emotional  and  disconnected  experi- 
ments of  the  poems. 

Maeterlinck  has  defined  his  aesthetic  in  his 
prose  essays.  He  played  queer  pranks  upon 
373 


ICONOCLASTS 

the  nerves  with  these  shadows,  these  spiritual 
marionettes,  which  are  pure  abstractions  typify- 
ing various  qualities  of  the  temperament  The 
iteration  of  his  speech  is  like  the  dripping  of 
water  upon  the  heads  of  the  condemned.  It 
finally  stuns  the  consciousness,  and  then,  like  a 
performer  upon  some  fantastic  instrument  with 
one  string,  this  virtuoso  executes  variations 
boasting  a  solitary  theme  —  the  fear  of  Fear. 
Speech,  says  Maeterlinck,  is  never  the  me- 
dium of  communication  of  real  and  inmost 
thoughts.  Silence  alone  can  transmit  them 
from  soul  to  soul.  We  talk  to  fill  up  the  blanks 
of  life.  Silence  is  so  truth-telling,  so  illumi- 
native, that  few  have  the  courage  to  face  it. 
Mankind  fears  silence  more  than  the  dark. 
(Poe  again;  Silence.)  The  most  illuminating 
silence  of  all,  the  most  irresistible,  is  the  Silence 
of  Death.  It  is  the  unspoken  word  that  reveals 
our  inner  self.  "  We  do  not  know  each  other ; 
we  have  not  yet  dared  to  be  silent  together." 
Modern  thought  and  literature  lack  this  mystic 
element,  lack  the  atmosphere  of  the  spiritual, 
perfect  as  is  its  technic  and  its  intellectual 
equipment.  The  Russians  have  it  in  their  fiction 
—  a  fiction  of  epilepsy  and  burning  spiritual 
crises.  The  Middle  Ages  had  it.  Men  stood 
nearer  to  nature,  to  God.  They  understood  chil- 
dren, women,  animals,  plants,  inanimate  objects, 
with  greater  tenderness  and  greater  depth.  "  The 
statues  and  paintings  they  have  left  us  may  not 
be  perfect,  but  a  mysterious  power  and  secret 
374 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

charm  that  I  cannot  define  are  imprisoned  within 
them,  and  bestow  upon  them  perpetual  youth. 
Hamlet,  King  Lear,  Macbeth,  are  filled  with 
the  mysterious  chant  of  the  infinite,  the  threat- 
ening silence  of  souls  and  of  gods,  eternity 
thundering  on  the  horizon,  fate  and  fatality  per- 
ceived interiorly  without  any  one  being  able  to 
say  by  what  signs  they  have  been  recognized." 

Here  we  recognize  the  true  mystic,  the  feeder 
upon  the  writings  of  Emerson,  Novalis,  the 
Admirable  Ruysbroeck ;  Plato,  Plotinus,  St. 
Bernard,  Jacob  Boehme,  and  Coleridge.  And 
while  he  achieves  astonishing  flights  into  the 
blue,  he  always  returns  to  mother  earth.  There 
is  spiritual  lift  in  his  words,  —  lift  and  ofttimes 
intoxication.  Generations  of  Flemish  ancestors 
have  dowered  this  young  thinker  with  solid 
nerves  and  a  saner  intellectual  apparatus  than 
his  early  critics  imagined.  And  he  never  ex- 
hibits what  old  Chaucer  called  "  the  spiced  con- 
science." Neither  hell's  flames  nor  the  joys  of 
heaven  appear  in  his  pages.  He  preaches  only 
of  man  and  the  soul  of  man. 

Without  the  mystery  of  life,  life  is  not  worth 
the  living.  The  static  opposed  to  the  dynamic 
theatre  is  his  ideal  mood,  not  action ;  the  imma- 
terial, not  the  obvious.  Hamlet  is  not  awake  — 
at  every  moment  does  he  advance  to  the  very 
brink  of  awakening.  The  mysterious  chant  of 
the  Infinite,  the  ominous  silence  of  the  soul  and 
of  God,  the  murmur  of  Eternity  on  the  horizon, 
the  destiny  or  fatality  that  we  are  conscious 
375 


ICONOCLASTS 

within  us,  though  by  what  tokens  none  may  inti 
—  do  not  all  these  underlie  King  Lear,  Macbeth, 
Hamlet  ?  Are  there  not  elements  of  deeper 
gravity  and  stability  in  happiness  in  a  single 
moment  of  repose  than  in  the  whirlwind  of 
passion  ?  Does  the  soul  only  flower  on  nights 
of  storm  ?  "  But  to  the  tragic  author,  as  to  the 
mediocre  painter  who  still  lingers  over  historical 
pictures,  it  is  only  the  violence  of  the  anecdote 
that  appeals  .  .  .  whereas  it  is  far  away  from 
bloodshed,  battle-cry,  and  sword  thrust  that  the 
lives  of  most  of  us  flow  on,  and  men's  tears  are 
silent  to-day,  and  invisible,  and  almost  spiritual." 
Maeterlinck  goes  to  the  modern  theatre  and 
feels  as  if  he  had  spent  a  few  hours  with 
his  ancestors,  who  conceived  life  as  something 
that  was  primitive,  arid,  and  brutal.  He  sees 
murder,  hears  of  deceived  husbands  and  wives 
instead  of  being  shown  some  act  of  life  "  traced 
back  to  its  sources  and  to  its  mystery  by  con- 
necting links."  He  yearns  for  one  of  the 
strange  moments  of  a  higher  life  that  flit  unper- 
ceived  through  his  dreariest  hours.  "  Othello 
does  not  appear  to  live  the  august  daily  life  of 
Hamlet,  who  has  the  time  to  live,  inasmuch  as 
he  does  not  act.  Othello  is  admirably  jealous. 
But  is  it  not  perhaps  an  ancient  error  to  imagine 
that  it  is  at  the  moment  when  this  passion,  or 
others  of  equal  violence,  possess  us  that  we 
live  our  truest  lives  ?  I  have  grown  to  believe 
that  an  old  man,  seated  in  his  arm-chair,  waiting 
patiently  with  his  lamp  beside  him ;  giving  un- 
376 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

conscious  ear  to  all  the  eternal  laws  that  reign 
about  the  house,  interpreting,  without  compre- 
hending, the  silence  of  doors  and  windows  and 
the  quivering  voice  of  light,  submitting  with 
bent  head  to  the  presence  of  his  soul  and  his 
destiny  —  an  old  man,  who  conceives  not  that 
all  the  powers  of  this  world,  like  so  many  heed- 
ful servants,  are  mingling  and  keeping  vigil  in 
his  room,  who  suspects  not  that  the  very  sun 
is  supporting  in  space  the  little  table  against 
which  he  leans  or  that  every  star  in  heaven  and 
every  fibre  of  the  soul  are  directly  concerned 
in  the  movement  of  an  eyelid  that  closes,  or  a 
thought  that  springs  to  birth  —  I  have  grown 
to  believe  that  he,  motionless  as  he  is,  does  yet 
live  in  reality  a  deeper,  more  human,  and  more 
universal  life  than  the  lover  who  strangles  his 
mistress,  the  captain  who  conquers  in  battle,  or 
the  husband  who  avenges  his  honour." 

This  excerpt  (translated  by  Alfred  Sutro) 
shows  the  real  Maeterlinck,  the  man  whose 
mind  is  imbued  by  the  strangeness  of  common 
life,  the  mystic  correspondences,  the  star  in  the 
grain  of  wheat.  The  philosophy  is  akin  to  cer- 
tain passages  executed  in  the  allegoric  pictures 
of  Albrecht  Diirer,  William  Blake,  Rossetti,  and 
Burne-Jones. 

Each  century,  he  argues,  has  its  own  near 
sorrow.  It  is  well  that  we  should  sally  forth 
in  search  of  our  sorrows  —  the  value  of  our- 
selves is  but  the  value  of  our  melancholy  and 
disquiets.  The  tragic  masterpieces  of  the  past 
377 


ICONOCLASTS 

are  inferior  in  the  quality  of  their  sorrow  com- 
pared to  the  sorrows  of  to-day.  To-day  it  is 
fatality  that  we  challenge ;  and  this  is  perhaps 
the  distinguishing  note  of  the  new  theatre.  It 
is  no  longer  the  effects  of  disaster  that  arrest 
our  attention;  it  is  disaster  itself;  and  we.  are 
eager  to  know  its  essence  and  its  laws.  It  is 
the  rallying  point  of  the  most  recent  dramas, 
the  centre  of  light  with  strange  flames  gleaming, 
about  which  revolve  the  souls  of  women  and 
men.  And  a  step  has  been  taken  toward  the 
mystery  so  that  life's  mysteries  may  be  looked 
in  the  face.  Between  past  and  future  man 
("  What  is  man  but  a  god  who  is  afraid  ? ") 
stands  trembling  on  the  tiny  oasis  of  the  pres- 
ent. It  is  the  disaster  of  our  existence  that  we 
fear  our  soul;  did  we  but  allow  it  to  smile 
frankly  in  its  silence  and  its  radiance,  we  should 
be  already  living  an  eternal  life.  O  for  those 
"reservoirs  of  certitudes"  on  the  other  side  of 
night,  "whither  the  silent  herd  of  souls  flock 
every  morning  to  slake  their  thirst." 

"To  every  man  there  come  noble  thoughts 
that  pass  his  heart  like  great  white  birds." 
Then  is  recalled  Browning  and  his  similitude 
of  the  meanest  soul  that  has  its  better  side 
to  show  its  love.  "  In  life  there  is  no  crea- 
ture so  degraded  but  knows  full  well  which  is 
the  noble  and  beautiful  thing  he  must  do."  A 
life  perceived  is  a  life  transformed.  To  love 
one's  self  is  to  love  thy  neighbour  in  thyself ! 
Maeterlinck's  attitude  toward  woman  —  the  true 
378 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

touchstone  of  philosopher,  poet,  priest,  and  artist 

—  is  beautiful.     "I   have   never   met   a   single 
woman   who   did   not  bring   to   me   something 
that  was  great." 

The  spiritual  renascence  may  be  at  hand. 
It  is  the  theatre  that  last  feels  its  approach. 
Poetry,  painting,  sculpture,  music,  all  have 
met  it  halfway;  only  the  stage  lags  in  the 
rear.  Plot,  action,  trickeries,  cheap  illusions, 
must  be  swept  away  into  the  limbo  of  things 
used  up.  Atmosphere,  the  atmosphere  of  un- 
uttered  emotions,  arrested  attitudes,  ideas  of  the 
spiritual  subconscious,  are  to  usurp  the  mechani- 
cal formulas  of  to-day.  The  ideal  is  music  — 
music,  the  archetype  of  the  arts.  (Walter  Pater 
preached  this  platonic  doctrine.)  "  It  is  only  the 
words  that  at  first  sight  seem  useless  that  really 
count  in  a  work."  But  to  realize,  to  exteriorize 
the  mystery,  the  significance  of  the  soul  life, 
what  a  strange  and  symbolic  web  must  be  woven 
by  the  poet-dramatist !  He  must  break  with  the 
conventions  of  the  past  and  create  something 
that  is  not  quite  painting,  not  quite  drama,  some- 
thing that  is  more  than  poetry,  less  than  music 

—  full  of  ecstasies,  silent  joys,  luminous  pauses, 
and  the  burning  fever  of  the  soul  that  sometimes 
slays. 

It  is  very  beautiful,  very  ideal  —  bard,  poet, 
mystic,  moralist,  and  playwright,  that  Maeter- 
linck dared  to  become.  He  practised  before  he 
preached  —  unlike  most  men;  and  he  had  the 
slow  fortitude  of  the  brave.  We  know  now  that 
379 


ICONOCLASTS 

artistically  he  springs  from  the  loins  of  Foe  and 
Hoffmann ;  that  Villiers  de  1'Isle  Adam  was  his 
spiritual  godfather ;  that  by  the  Belgian's  artful 
scale  of  words  he  evoked  images  in  our  mind 
which  recall  the  harmonies  of  unheard  music ; 
that  the  union  of  mysticism  and  freedom  of 
thinking  lends  to  his  work  peculiar  eloquence ; 
that  his  device  is  "  Within  me  there  is  more," 
a  mediaeval  inscription  borrowed  from  an  old 
doorway  in  Bruges.  He  is  more  revolutionary 
than  Ibsen  in  the  matter  of  technic.  Maeter- 
linck writes  a  play  about  an  open  door,  a  closed 
window,  or  the  vague  and  disheartening  twi- 
lights of  cloudy  gardens.  That  he  is  quite  sane 
in  his  early  work  we  must  not  assert  —  since 
when  shall  art  and  sanity  be  driven  in  easy 
harness  ? 

In  giving  a  bare  abstract  of  Maeterlinck's 
theories,  spiritual  and  aesthetic,  their  beauty  and 
nobility,  we  but  clear  the  way  for  a  better,  be- 
cause wider,  appreciation  of  the  plays.  Let  us 
consider  them  all  from  The  Intruder  to  Monna 
Vanna  and  Joyzelle. 

II 

"  By  mysticism  we  mean,  not  the  extravagance 
of  an  erring  fancy,  but  the  concentration  of  rea- 
son in  feeling,  the  enthusiastic  love  of  the  good, 
the  true,  the  one,  the  sense  of  the  infinity  of 
knowledge,  and  of  the  marvel  of  the  human 
faculties.  When  feeding  upon  such  thoughts 
380 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

the  '  wing  of  the  soul  is  renewed  and  gains 
strength,  she  is  raised  above  the  manikins  of 
earth '  and  their  opinions,  waiting  in  wonder  to 
know  and  working  with  reverence  to  find  out 
what  God  in  this  or  in  another  life  may  reveal 
to  her." 

This  is  not  from  Maurice  Maeterlinck ;  it  was 
written  by  a  hard-headed  man  and  lovable  teacher, 
the  late  Benjamin  Jowett,  the  famous  Master  of 
Balliol.  Not  intended  as  a  text,  but  merely  to 
show  that  the  lift  of  spirit,  which  is  the  sign 
manual  of  mysticism,  does  not  prelude  the  prac- 
tical. It  is  a  fresh  visual  angle  from  which  are 
viewed  the  things  of  heaven  and  earthly  things. 

In  his  youth,  possibly  to  escape  the  sterilities 
of  the  code  —  for  he  was  an  advocate  by  profes- 
sion—  Maeterlinck  took  up  the  mystic  writers 
though  the  drama  pulled  him  hard,  as  it  ever 
does  with  the  preelected.  Little  danger  of  this 
ardent  young  man  weighing,  as  do  many,  the 
theatre  in  the  scales  of  commerce.  As  with 
Ibsen,  the  stage  was  an  escape  for  Maeterlinck ; 
it  liberated  ideas,  poetic,  dramatic,  mystic,  which 
had  become  intolerable,  ideas  which  turned  his 
brain.  That  art  of  which  Pinero  so  eloquently 
writes,  "  The  great,  the  fascinating,  and  most 
difficult  art,  .  .  .  compression  of  life  without 
falsification,"  could  never  have  signified  a  gold 
mine  for  Maeterlinck  as  it  did  for  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson.  To  the  Belgian  it  was  not  a  specu- 
lation, but  a  consecration.  To  it  he  brought 
that  "  concentration  of  thought  and  sustained 


ICONOCLASTS 

intensity"  which  Pinero  deems  imperative  in 
the  curriculum  of  a  dramatic  artist. 

Upon  the  anvil  of  his  youthful  dreams  did 
Maeterlinck  forge  his  little  plays  for  marionettes. 
Shadowy  they  are,  brief  transcripts  of  emotion, 
but  valuable  in  illustrating  unity  of  purpose,  of 
mood,  of  tone.  Herein  lies  their  superiority  to 
Browning's  more  elaborate  structures.  Before  he 
ventured  into  the  maze  of  plotting,  Maeterlinck 
was  content  with  simple  types  of  construction. 
The  lyric  musician  in  this  poet,  the  lover  of 
beauty,  led  him  to  make  his  formula  a  musical 
one.  The  dialogue  of  the  first  plays  seems  like 
new  species  of  musical  notation.  If  there  is  not 
rhyme  there  is  rhythm,  interior  rhythm,  and  an 
alluring  assonance.  Hence  we  get  pages  bur- 
dened with  repetitions  and  also  the  "  crossing 
fire  "  of  jewelled  words.  Apart  from  their  spirit 
the  lines  of  this  poet  are  sonorously  beautiful. 
In  the  "  purple "  mists  of  his  early  manner  a 
weaker  man  might  have  perished.  Not  so 
Maeterlinck.  He  is  first  the  thinker  —  a  thinker 
of  strange  thoughts  independent  of  their  verbal 
settings.  He  soon  escaped  preciosity  in  diction  ; 
it  was  monotony  of  mood  that  chained  him  to 
his  many  experimentings. 

And  therein  the  old  ghost  of  the  Romantics 
comes  to  life  asserting  its  "  claims  of  the  ideal," 
as  Ibsen  has  the  phrase.  Crushed  to  dust  by 
the  hammers  of  the  realists,  sneered  at  in  the 
bitter-sweet  epigrams  of  Heine,  Romance  returns 
to  us  wearing  a  new  mask.  We  name  this  mask 
382 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

Symbolism ;  but  joyous,  incarnate  behind  its  shift- 
ing shapes,  marches  Romance,  the  Romance  of 
1 830,  the  Romance  of  —  Before  the  Deluge.  The 
earth-men,  the  Troglodytes,  who  went  delving 
into  moral  sewers  and  backyards  of  humanity, 
ruled  for  a  decade  and  a  day ;  then  the  van- 
quished reconquered.  In  this  cycle  of  art  it  is 
Romance  that  comes  to  us  more  often,  remains 
longer  when  it  does  come. 

Maurice  Maeterlinck  employs  the  symbol  in- 
stead of  the  sword ;  the  psyche  is  his  panache. 
His  puppets  are  all  poetic — the  same  poetry  as  of 
eld  informs  their  gestures  and  their  speech.  He 
so  fashions  them  of  such  fragile  pure  stuff  that 
a  phrase  maladministered  acts  as  the  thrust  of  a 
dagger.  The  Idea  of  Death  slays :  the  blind 
see ;  bodies  die,  but  the  soul  persists ;  voices  of 
expiring  lovers  float  through  vast  and  shadowy 
corridors  —  as  in  Alladine  and  Palomides — chil- 
dren speak  as  if  their  lips  had  been  touched  by 
the  burning  coal  of  prophecy  ;  their  souls  are  laid 
bare  with  a  cruel  pity ;  love  is  strangled  by  a 
hair ;  we  see  Death  stalk  in  the  interior  of  a  quiet 
home,  or  rather  feel  than  see ;  or  in  our  ears  is 
whispered  a  terrible  and  sweet  tale  of  the  Death 
of  Tintagiles  —  it  is  all  moonlight  music,  mystery 
with  a  nightmare  finale ;  or  a  tender  original 
soul  is  crushed  by  the  sheer  impact  of  a  great 
love  hovering  near  it  —  Aglavaine  and  Selysette. 
Then  we  get  fantasy  and  miracle  play,  librettos, 
full  of  charm,  wonder,  and  delicious  irony. 
Maeterlinck  recalls  life,  beckons  to  life,  and  in 
383 


ICONOCLASTS 

Monna  Vanna  smashes  the  stained-glass  splen- 
dours hemming  him  in  from  the  world;  and 
behold  —  we  are  given  drama,  see  the  shock  of 
character,  and  feel  the  mailed  hand  of  a  warrior- 
dramatist.  In  a  dozen  years  he  has  traversed  a 
kingdom,  has  grown  from  wunderkind  to  mature 
artist,  from  a  poet  of  few  moods  to  a  maker  of 
viable  drama. 

The  chronology  of  the  Maeterlinckian  dra- 
matic works  is  this:  Princess  Maleine  (1889); 
The  Intruder,  The  Blind  (1890);  The  Seven 
Princesses  ( 1 89 1 ) ;  Pelleas  and  Me"  lisande  ( 1 892) ; 
Alladine  and  Palomides,  Interior,  The  Death 
of  Tintagiles  (1894);  Aglavaine  and  Selysette 
(1896);  Ariane  and  Barbe-Bleu,  Sister  Beatrice 
(1901);  Monna  Vanna  (1902);  Joyzelle  (1903). 

Though  the  first  attempts  are  emotional  pres- 
entations of  ideas,  though  the  dramatic  form  is, 
from  a  Scribe  standpoint,  amateurish,  yet  the 
unmistakable  flair  of  the  born  dramatist  is  pres- 
ent. In  the  beginning  Maeterlinck  elected  to 
mould  poetic  moods ;  later  on  we  shall  see  him 
a  moulder  of  men  and  women. 

A  thinker  may  view  the  visible  universe  as  a 
symbol,  as  the  garment  wherewith  the  gods  con- 
ceal themselves  ;  this  Goethe  did.  Or  this  globe, 
upon  the  round  of  which  move  sorrowful 
creatures  whirled  through  space  from  an  un- 
thinkable past  to  an  unthinkable  future,  may  be 
apprehended  as  a  phantasmagoria,  shot  through 
with  misery,  a  cage  of  dreams,  a  prison  wherein 
the  echoes  of  what  has  been  thought  and  done 
384 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

meet  in  cruel  confluence  within  the  walls  of  the 
human  brain.  All  pessimistic  cosmogonists, 
poets,  dramatists,  dwell,  with  the  obsession  of 
an  idte  fixe,  upon  this  scheme  of  things  terres- 
trial. And  then  there  is  De  Maupassant,  an  eye, 
which  photographed  the  salient  profiles  of  his 
fellow-beings ;  or  Poe,  who,  suffering  from  an 
incurable  disease,  felt  the  horror  of  the  pulse- 
beat,  the  hideous  drama  of  mere  sentience. 
Charles  Darwin,  with  pitiless  objectivity,  dis- 
plays a  map  of  life  whereon  the  struggle  is 
eternal  —  a  struggle  from  protoplasm  to  Super- 
Man  (the  latter  a  mad  idea  in  a  poet's  skull). 
Carlyle  thunders  at  the  Sons  of  Belial  and  we 
shrivel  up  in  the  fiery  furnace  of  his  eloquent 
wrath ;  or  John  Henry  Newman  wooes  us  to 
God  with  beautiful,  gentle  speech.  To  every 
man  his  illusion.  Maeterlinck's  is  the  appre- 
hension of  the  helplessness  of  mankind,  though 
not  its  hopelessness.  His  optimism,  the  germ  of 
which  is  in  the  poems,  has  grown  steadily  with 
the  years.  And  the  tinge  of  pessimism,  of  mor- 
bidity, in  his  earlier  productions  has  vanished  in 
the  dialectic  of  his  prose. 

Maeterlinck  first  saw  his  drama  as  music  — 
this  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,  but  it  best  ex- 
presses the  meaning  intended.  As  in  music 
there  are  ebb  and  flow,  rhythmic  pulse,  so  his 
little  landscapes  unroll  themselves  with  itera- 
tion to  the  accompaniment  of  mournful  voices. 
No  dramatist,  ancient  or  modern,  so  depends 
upon  vocal  timbre  to  embody  his  dreams  as  this 
385 


ICONOCLASTS 

one.  In  reality  his  characters  are  voice  or 
nothing.  From  the  deeps  of  haunted  gardens 
come  these  muffled  voices,  voices  suffocated  by 
sorrow,  poignant  voices  and  sinister.  Allusion 
has  been  made  to  the  Poe-like  machinery  of 
Maeterlinck  —  atmosphere.  It  is,  however,  only 
external.  He  works  quite  differently  from  Poe, 
and  the  dekoration  with  its  dreamy  forests,  skies 
lowering  or  resonant  with  sunshine,  parks  and 
fountains,  stretch  of  sea  and  dreary  moats,  is 
but  a  background  for  his  moods.  He  pushes 
much  farther  than  Ibsen  and  Wagner  the 
rhythmic  correspondences  of  man  and  his  artis- 
tic environment.  But  the  voice  dominates  his 
drama,  the  human  voice  with  all  its  varied  in- 
tonations, its  wealth  of  subtle  nuance. 

Instead  of  the  idea-complexity  we  find  in 
Browning,  in  Maeterlinck  the  single  motif  is 
elaborated.  He  is  not  polyphonic,  —  to  bor- 
row a  musical  metaphor,  —  but  monophonic. 
Where  he  is  a  psychologist  of  the  most  modern 
stamp  lies  in  his  perception  of  the  fact  that 
there  is  no  longer  an  autonomous  /,  the  human 
ego  is  an  orchestra  of  collective  egos.  We, 
not  /,  is  the  burden  of  our  consciousness. 
Through  countless  ages  the  vast  chemistry  of 
the  Eternal  retort  has  created  a  bubble,  an  atom, 
which  says  /  to  itself  in  daylight,  when  looking 
in  mirrors,  but  in  the  dark  when  the  inutile 
noise  of  life  is  ceased  then  the  /  becomes  a 
multitudinous  We.  All  the  head  hums  with 
repercussive  memories  of  anterior  existences. 
386 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

Some  call  it  dreaming ;    others  nerve-memory ; 
others  again  —  recollection  of  anterior  life. 

Other  dramatists  have  hinted  this  pantheism 
before  Maeterlinck.  Shakespeare  was  a  sym- 
bolist ;  so  was  Ibsen  when  he  penned  his  The 
Master  Builder.  But  the  younger  man  makes 
a  formula  of  the  idea.  His  is  the  dramaturgy 
of  the  subconscious.  His  people  say  things 
and  thereby  reveal  their  multiple  personalities, 
even  the  colour  of  their  souls.  Here,  then,  is  the 
symbolist.  To  put  the  case  more  clearly,  let 
Alirie  Gorren  be  heard,  —  a  writer  who  is  im- 
bued with  the  beauty  of  symbolic  ideas  :  — 

"Your  documents,  details,  verified  facts,  are  pre- 
cisely the  least  worth  considering,"  says,  in  effect,  the 
Symbolist.  "  They  are  appearances ;  impalpable  shad- 
ows of  clouds.  Nothing  ye  think  to  see  is  what  it 
seems."  Nothing  outside  of  our  representation  exists. 
All  visibilities  are  symbols.  Our  business  is  to  find 
out  what  these  symbols  are.  Any  book  that  does  not 
directly  concern  itself  with  the  hints  concealed  beneath 
the  diversified  masks  and  aspects  of  matter  is  a  house 
built  out  of  a  boy's  toy  blocks.  Science,  after  promis- 
ing more  things  than  it  could  fulfil,  has  many  hypothe- 
ses just  now  that  float  about  one  central  idea  —  the 
existence  of  one  essence,  infinite  in  moods,  by  refer- 
ence to  which  alone  anything  whatsoever  can  be  un- 
derstood. Those  of  our  creed  only  and  solely  have  a 
philosophic  basis  for  their  art. 

Emil  Verhaeren,  Belgian   mystic,    anarchist, 
poet,  sings  of   The  Forest  of   Numbers  in  his 
hate-saturated  chants,  Les  Flambeaux  Noirs. 
387 


ICONOCLASTS 

Je  suis  I'hallucin6  de  la  foret  des  Nombres. 

And  was  not  the  greatest  mystic  of  all  one 
who  saw  the  image  in  the  fiery  bush,  one  who, 
"  in  the  midway  of  this  our  mortal  life,"  found 
himself  in  a  gloomy  wood  astray  —  was  not 
Dante  a  supreme  symbolist  ?  Life  for  a  man 
of  Maeterlinck's  temperament  is  ever  a  "  forest 
of  numbers ";  with  its  strange  arithmetic  he 
hallucinates  himself.  What  is  The  Intruder 
but  a  symbol,  and  one  that  has  enchained  the 
attention  of  man  from  before  the  time  when  the 
Brachycephalic  and  the  Dolichocephalic  waged 
war  with  the  cave-bear  and  murder  was  cele- 
brated in  tribal  lays  ?  Through  the  ages  Death, 
either  as  a  shadowy  obstruction  or  a  skeleton 
with  scythe  and  hour-glass,  has  marched  ahead 
of  men.  Epic  and  anecdote,  canvas  and  composi- 
tion, have  celebrated  his  ineluctible  victories. 
Why  then  call  Maeterlinck  morbid  for  embroider- 
ing the  macabre,  fascinating  theme  with  new 
variations ! 

Death  the  Intruder !  Always  the  Intruder. 
In  his  first  little  dramatic  plaque,  it  is  the  vener- 
able grandfather  who  is  clairvoyant :  Death, 
protagonist.  Almost  imperceptibly  the  shadow 
steals  into  the  room  with  the  lighted  lamp  and 
big  Dutch  clock.  The  spiritual  evidence  is 
cumulative ;  a  series  of  cunningly  worded  affir- 
mations, and  lo  !  Death  the  Intruder.  It  is  a 
revelation  of  the  technic  of  atmosphere.  Voice 
again  is  the  chief  character. 
388 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

The  Blind  takes  us  out  of  doors,  though  one 
senses  the  atmosphere  of  the  charnel-house 
under  the  blue  bowl  of  the  unvarying  sky.  This 
is  the  most  familiar  and  the  most  derided  of  the 
Maeterlinckian  plays.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to 
describe  that  "  ancient  Nordland  forest,"  with  its 
"  eternal  look  under  a  sky  of  deep  stars."  The 
stage  directions  of  these  poems  are  matchless. 
How  depict  an  "  eternal  look  "  ?  These  exalted 
pictures  are  but  the  verbal  instrumentation  of 
Maeterlinck's  motives.  They  may  be  imagined, 
never  realized.  Yet  how  the  settings  enhance 
the  theme  !  These  blind  old  men  and  women, 
with  the  lame,  the  halt,  the  mad  and  the  sad, 
form  a  painful  tableau  in  the  centre  of  which 
sits  the  dead  priest,  their  keeper,  their  leader, 
without  whom  they  are  destined  to  stumble  into 
the  slow  waters  about  the  island. 

Death  the  Intruder  !  But  in  this  instance  an 
intruder  who  has  sneaked  in  unperceived.  The 
discovery  is  made  in  semi-tones  that  mount  sol- 
emnly to  the  apex  of  a  pyramid  of  woe.  This 
little  drama  is  more  "arranged"  than  The 
Intruder;  it  does  not  "happen"  so  inevitably. 
Interior,  called  Home  by  the  English  translator, 
the  lamented  poet  Richard  Hovey,  is  of  similar 
genre  to  The  Intruder.  From  a  coign  in  an 
old  garden  planted  with  willows  we  see  a  win- 
dow —  a  symbol ;  through  this  window  the 
family  may  be  viewed.  Its  members  are  seated. 
All  is  vague,  dreamy.  The  dialogue  occurs 
without.  An  old  man  and  a  stranger  discuss 
389 


ICONOCLASTS 

the  garden,  the  family  and — the  catastrophe. 
Most  skilfully  the  poet  marshals  his  facts  — 
hints,  pauses,  sighs,  are  the  actors  in  the  curious 
puppet-booth.  One  phrase  occurs  that  is  the 
purest  Maeterlinck :  — 

"Take  care,"  says  the  old  man;  "we  do  not 
know  how  far  the  soul  extends  about  men.  .  .  ." 
The  denouement  is  touching. 

From  Holbein  to  Saint-Saens  art  shows  a 
procession  of  dancing  Deaths  —  always  dancing 
with  bare  bones  that  creak  triumphantly.  In 
Maeterlinck's  mimings  there  is  something  of  the 
spirit  of  Walt  Whitman's  threnody. 

The  Belgian  translates  the  idea  of  Death  into 
phrases  more  hypnotic  than  Whitman's.  His 
"  cool-enfolding  Death  "  is  not  always  "  lovely 
and  soothing  "for  the  survivors.  His  cast  of 
mind  is  mediaeval,  and  presently  comes  sailing 
into  the  critical  consciousness  memories  of  the 
Pre-Raphaelitic  Brotherhood  with  its  strained 
attitudes,  its  glories  of  illuminated  glass,  its 
breathless  intensity  and  concentration  upon  a 
single  theme  —  above  all  its  apotheosis  of  the 
symbol  and  of  Death  the  Intruder.  It  is  one 
more  link  in  the  development  of  our  young 
dramatist.  He  knew  Poe  and  Emerson ;  he 
appreciated  Rossetti  both  as  poet  and  painter. 
In  the  next  group  of  plays  under  consideration 
a  step  nearer  life  may  be  noted,  a  stronger  ele- 
ment of  romance  betrays  itself.  We  are  ap- 
proaching, though  deliberately,  Maeterlinck,  the 
Romantic. 

39° 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 


III 

Israel  Zangwill  told  a  story  once  about  Mae- 
terlinck that  is  curious  even  if  not  true.  He 
said  the  Belgian  poet,  when  a  young  fellow,  was 
on  one  of  his  nocturnal  prowls,  and  while  sitting 
in  a  cafe  overheard  a  man  explain  a  new  dra- 
matic technic  to  his  friend.  In  it  was  the  germ 
of  the  Maeterlinck  plays.  Possibly  the  plays 
for  marionettes,  Les  Flaireurs,  of  Charles  van 
Lerberghe  were  a  starting-point.  The  growth 
of  the  poet  on  the  technical  side,  as  well  as  the 
evolution  from  vague,  even  nebulous  thinking  to 
the  calm,  solid  philosophy  of  Wisdom  and  Des- 
tiny, is  set  before  us  in  the  order  of  his  compo- 
sition. Nor  is  a  laconic  dialogue  so  amazingly 
new.  Dumas  employed  it,  and  also  Hugo. 

The  romantic  in  Maeterlinck  began  to  show 
itself  plainly  in  The  Seven  Princesses.  Death 
is  still  the  motive,  but  the  picture  is  ampler,  the 
frame  more  decorative.  Presently  we  shall  see 
meads  and  forests,  maidens  in  distress,  fountains 
and  lonely  knights.  Movement,  though  it  be  a 
mere  sinister  rustling  of  dead  leaves,  is  more 
manifest  in  this  transitional  period.  The  Seven 
Princesses  is  like  some  ancient  morality,  with 
the  nervous,  sonorous,  musical  setting  of  a  latter- 
day  composer.  It  has  a  spacious  hall  of  marble, 
with  a  flight  of  seven  white  marble  steps ;  there 
are  seven  sleeping  maidens  ;  a  silver  lamp  sheds 
its  mysterious  glow  upon  the  seven  of  mystic 
391 


ICONOCLASTS 

number  (the  poet  unconsciously  recalls  those 
other  seven  sleepers  of  the  early  chroniclers), 
and  the  landscape  without  the  palace  —  through 
the  windows  of  the  terrace  is  seen  the  setting 
sun ;  the  country  is  dark,  marshy,  and  between 
the  huge  willows  a  gloomy  canal  stretches  to 
the  horizon.  Upon  its  stagnant  waters  a  man- 
of-war  slowly  moves.  The  old  King  and  Queen 
in  the  terrace  note  its  approach.  Here  we  have 
a  prologue  full  of  atmosphere,  an  enigmatic 
story  awaiting  its  solution. 

We  learn  from  the  disjointed  dialogue  that 
the  Prince,  the  heir  apparent,  is  expected.  He 
comes  upon  the  ship.  He  is  welcomed  by  the 
aged  couple  — "  people  are  too  old  without 
knowing  it,"  says  the  Queen — and  the  ship 
leaves.  Its  departure  is  managed  poetically. 
The  far-away  voices  of  the  sailors  are  heard  in 
monotonous  song :  "  The  Atlantic,  the  Atlantic," 
evokes  a  feeling  of  the  remote  which  we  feel 
when  Vanderdecken's  vessel  vanishes  in  The 
Flying  Dutchman.  This  refrain  of  "The 
Atlantic,  the  Atlantic,  we  shall  return  no  more, 
the  Atlantic,"  sets  vibrating  certain  chords  of 
melancholy.  In  the  meantime  the  Prince  has 
been  regarding  the  sleepers  through  the  glass 
windows.  The  Queen,  whose  premonitions  of 
approaching  evil  are  quite  Maeterlinckian, 
points  out  the  beautiful  girls,  names  them.  The 
most  beautiful  of  all  is  Ursula.  The  Prince 
notices  that  this  Princess  does  not  sleep  like 
her  sisters.  "  She  is  holding  one  of  her  hands 
392 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

strangely,  .  .  ."  he  remarks.  "Why  has  she 
not  bound  up  her  hair?"  asks  the  Queen,  dis- 
tractedly. Gradually  the  little  evidences  accu- 
mulate. Something  is  wrong  below,  there  in  the 
great  hall,  where  breathlessly  sleep  the  seven 
Princesses  on  the  cushions  of  pale  silk  strewn 
upon  the  marble  steps. 

The  Prince,  after  trying  to  force  the  window, 
goes  through  a  secret  passage  and  reaches  the 
sleepers.  The  action  is  supplied  by  the  Queen 
at  the  window  above.  She  weeps,  she  beats  the 
glass,  she  says  frantic  things  in  the  gloom  to 
the  old  King.  "  Seven  little  open  mouths !  .  .  . 
Oh,  I  am  sure  they  are  thirsty,"  she  cries.  The 
Prince  awakens  the  Princesses  —  all  save  one. 
Ursula  lies  singularly  still.  "  She  is  not  asleep  ! 
She  is  not  asleep !  "  screams  the  frantic  Queen. 
There  is  a  hurrying  to  and  fro  of  servitors  with 
torches.  "  Open,  open,"  is  the  piteous  plaint  of 
the  old  woman.  Beyond,  in  the  night,  is  heard  the 
chant  of  the  seamen  as  they  fade  away  into 
the  darkness.  "  The  Atlantic,  the  Atlantic,  we 
shall  return  no  more." 

What  does  it  all  mean  ?  What  is  the  hidden 
symbol  ?  The  scene  suggests  Holland ;  yet  it 
is  no  man's  land.  These  dolorous  people  with 
burning  eyes  and  agitated,  feverish  gestures  — 
who  are  they  ?  Poets  all.  Despite  the  decora- 
tion, despite  the  skilful  handling  of  the  element 
of  suspense,  this  little  fantasy  is  not  for  the 
footlights.  It  is  too  literary.  There  is  mas- 
tery revealed  in  the  dialogue.  The  entire  piece 
393 


ICONOCLASTS 

recalls  a  wan  Burne-Jones  picture  with  the  sym- 
phonic accompaniment  of  Claude  Debussy. 

Perhaps  it  is  well  that  a  dramatist  is  more 
chained  to  the  planet  than  his  brethren,  the 
poet,  composer,  prosateur.  Like  the  sculptor 
and  the  architect,  the  dramatic  poet  must  deal 
with  forms  that  can  be  apprehended  by  the 
world.  All  art  is  a  convention  in  the  last  analy- 
sis; theatrical  art  contains  more  conventions  than 
the  rest.  Men  of  an  original  cast  of  mind  revolt 
at  the  checks  imposed  upon  their  imagination 
by  the  theatre.  But  Shakespeare  submitted  to 
them  and,  a  lesser  man,  Maeterlinck,  has  had  to 
suffer  the  pangs  of  defeat.  But  he  has  left  his 
imprint  upon  the  page  of  the  French  drama  in 
his  disregard  of  the  stage  carpentry  of  Scribe 
and  Sardou.  Above  all,  he  has  imparted  to  the 
contemporaneous  theatre  new  poetic  ideas.  A 
new  technic  —  on  the  material  side  —  is  of  less 
importance  than  the  introduction  of  new  modes 
of  expression,  of  atmosphere,  of  ideas. 

Maeterlinck,  after  his  early  essays  in  a  domain 
that  is  more  poetical  than  dramatic,  we  find 
longing  for  the  romantic.  He  tires  of  single 
figures  painted  upon  a  small  canvas.  (Faguet 
once  called  him  the  "  Henner  of  literature.") 
He  longs  for  more  space,  more  characters,  more 
action  —  in  a  word  —  variety.  We  get  it  in  his 
next  attempt,  Alladine  and  Palomides.  In  it 
there  is  less  music,  but  more  action  —  withal,  it 
is  na'fvely  childish.  Alladine  is  loved  by  Abla- 
more.  He  is  an  old  king,  reigning  over  a  castle 
394 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

surrounded  by  crazy  moats.  His  beloved  is 
very  young.  When  the  knightly  Palomides  ap- 
pears, they  mutually  love.  The  King  is  a  phi- 
losopher. Listen  :  "  Now  I  have  recognized  that 
misfortune  itself  is  of  better  worth  than  sleep, 
and  that  there  must  be  a  life  more  active  and 
higher  than  waiting.  .  .  ."  There  is  an  avenue 
of  fountains  that  unfolds  before  the  windows  — 
wonderful,  weariless.  Ablamore  interrogates 
Alladine  after  she  has  encountered  Palomides. 
Does  she  regard  the  weariless  fountains  alone  ? 
He  soon  lays  bare  the  child  soul  of  this  maiden. 
Ablamore  wishes  Palomides  to  marry  his  daugh- 
ter Astolaine.  He  goes  mad  with  jealousy  and 
casts  the  lovers  into  a  dungeon,  a  trick  dungeon, 
where  marvels  occur :  a  sea  that  is  a  sky,  move- 
less flowers.  The  pair  embrace.  Death  is  nigh 
—  "  there  is  no  kissing  twice  upon  the  heart  of 
death."  Finally  they  are  engulfed.  Rescued, 
they  die  in  separate  chambers  of  the  palace,  from 
which  the  aged  King  has  fled.  Voices  are  the 
only  actors  in  the  last  scene. 

Mediaeval,  too,  in  its  picturesque  quality  is 
The  Death  of  Tintagiles  with  its  five  short  acts 
of  despairing  sister  love.  The  little  Tintagiles 
is  the  king  that  is  to  be.  His  grandmother,  a 
demented  old  woman,  suffers  from  a  mania 
which  takes  the  form  of  aggressive  jealousy. 
She  is  ancient  on  her  throne  —  in  what  strange 
land  does  she  reign  ?  —  and  she  seeks  to  assassi- 
nate the  poor  little  boy.  Ygraine  and  Bellangere, 
his  sisters,  thwart  her  desires  for  a  time  —  but 
395 


ICONOCLASTS 

only  for  a  short  time.  He  is  eventually  kid- 
napped and  murdered.  This  simple,  old-world 
fairy  story  —  all  Maeterlinck  has  a  tang  of 
the  supernatural  —  is  treated  exquisitely.  The 
arousing  of  pity  for  the  doomed  child  is  almost 
Shakespearian.  These  children  of  Maeterlinck 
are  his  own  creation.  No  one,  with  the  exception 
of  Dostoievsky  and  Hauptmann,  approaches  him 
in  unfolding  the  artless  secrets  of  the  childish 
heart.  Like  plucked  petals  of  a  white  virginal 
flower,  the  little  soul  is  exposed.  And  there  is 
no  taint  of  precocious  sexuality  as  in  Dostoiev- 
sky's studies  of  childhood  (Les  Precoces  and 
others).  Hauptmann's  Hannele,  among  modern 
figures  of  girlhood,  alone  matches  the  Belgian. 
Hannele  is  nearer  the  soil  than  Tintagiles  or 
the  little  Yniold. 

"  There  seems  to  be  a  watch  set  for  the  ap- 
proach of  the  slightest  happiness,"  laments 
Ygraine  as  she  holds  Tintagiles  by  the  hand. 
They  live  in  a  tower  that  stands  in  an  amphi- 
theatre of  shadows.  It  is  in  the  valley.  The 
air  does  not  seem  to  go  down  so  low.  The  walls 
of  the  tower  are  cracking.  "  You  would  say  it 
was  dissolving  in  the  shadows."  There  the 
grandmother  Queen  resides.  "They  say  she  is 
not  beautiful  and  that  she  is  growing  huge." 
There  is  something  monstrous  in  this  hint  of 
her  size  —  as  though  a  black,  dropsical  spider 
sat  in  the  dark  weaving  the  murderous  webs  for 
passing  flies.  Only  the  fly  in  this  case  is  her 
grandson.  Into  the  "sickening  castle"  go  the 
396 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

"little  sad  King"  and  his  sisters.  Bellangere 
relates  that  smothered  voices  reached  her  in  one 
of  the  strange  corridors.  They  spoke  of  a  child 
and  a  crown  of  gold.  She  did  not  understand, 
"  for  it  was  hard  to  hear,  and  their  voices  were 
sweet."  Enough,  however,  to  put  the  sisters  on 
their  guard. 

In  their  sleeping  room  they  bar  the  doors. 
An  old  retainer  is  with  them.  At  the  end  of 
the  act  a  door  is  slowly  pushed  open.  They 
exert  all  their  force  to  keep  it  closed.  The 
old  man  puts  his  sword  through  the  opening ;  it 
snaps.  The  room  grows  colder  as  the  door, 
worked  by  unseen  means,  opens.  Then  Tinta- 
giles  utters  a  piercing  cry.  The  door  closes. 
They  are  saved  —  for  a  time.  Act  IV  gives  us 
the  corridor  in  front  of  the  room  wherein  hide 
the  boy  and  his  sisters.  The  handmaids  of  the 
vile  old  Queen  chatter.  It  is  near  midnight. 
Sleep  has  overtaken  the  hapless  victims.  The 
handmaids  steal  Tintagiles,  and  the  scene  ends 
in  screams.  But  the  last  act  gives  us  sensations 
of  the  direst  sort,  because  its  terrors  are  felt  and 
not  seen.  It  is  nearly  all  monologue.  Only 
an  actress  of  superior  tragic  power  could  do  jus- 
tice to  this  intense  episode.  A  great  iron  door 
is  seen.  Ygraine,  haggard,  dishevelled,  enters, 
lamp  in  hand.  She  has  tracked  her  darling  to 
this  awful  spot.  "  I  found  all  these  golden  curls 
along  the  steps  and  along  the  walls ;  and  I  fol- 
lowed them.  I  picked  them  up.  .  .  .  Oh  !  oh  ! 
They  are  very  beautiful.  .  .  .  They  say  the 
397 


ICONOCLASTS 

shadows  poison.  .  .  .  Ah !  Still  more  golden 
curls  shut  in  the  door.  .  .  .  Tintagiles !  " 

Then  a  tiny  knock  is  heard  —  the  bruised  fists 
of  Tintagiles  on  the  other  side  of  the  massive 
door.  "Sister  Ygraine,  sister  Ygraine,"  he  calls. 
He  tells  her  he  escaped  from  the  monster.  He 
struck  her — struck  her!  Poe-like  he  exclaims, 
"  Open  quickly  .  .  .  for  the  love  of  dear  God, 
sister  Ygraine."  You  feel  the  hideous  woman 
approaching.  "  She  is  breathing  behind  me," 
moans  the  child  as  the  fat,  panting  devil  reaches 
him,  an  obscene  shape  of  terror.  "  She  ...  is 
taking  me  by  the  throat.  ..."  Ygraine,  frantic, 
without,  hears  the  fall  of  a  little  body  and  bursts 
into  despairing  invectives.  "  Let  me  be  punished 
some  other  way.  .  .  .  There  are  so  many  things 
that  could  give  me  more  pain  ...  if  thou  lovest 
to  give  pain." 

I  confess  that  the  condensed  bitterness  and 
woe  and  cruelty  of  this  last  act  border  on  the 
pathologic  if  we  do  not  consider  the  symbol.  I 
would  rather  hear  the  beautiful  symphonic  poem 
of  Charles  Martin  Loeffler  based  upon  the  poetic 
impressions  of  this  piece  —  the  art  of  music  gives 
us  the  "  pathos  of  distance."  Yet  Maeterlinck's 
Death  of  Tintagiles  is  in  form  and  style  far 
above  his  previous  efforts.  His  marionettes 
are  beginning  to  modulate  into  flesh  and  blood, 
and,  like  the  mermaid  of  the  fairy  story,  the 
transformation  is  a  painful  one. 

We  note  this  modulation  particularly  in  Pelle"as 
and  M61isande.  First  played  in  English  by 
398 


MAURICE    MAETERLINCK 

Forbes  Robertson  and  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell, 
the  play  made  a  mixed  impression  in  London  ; 
though  it  may  be  confessed  that,  despite  the 
scenic  splendour,  the  translation  and  the  acting 
transposed  to  a  lower,  realistic  key  this  lovely 
drama  of  souls.  There  is  no  play  of  Maeter- 
linck's so  saturated  in  poesy,  so  replete  with 
romance.  The  romantic  in  Maeterlinck  has 
here  full  sway.  There  are  episodes  as  intense 
as  the  second  act  of  Tristan  and  Isolde.  One 
expects  to  hear  King  Marke's  distant,  tremulous 
hunting  horns  in  the  forest  scene  of  the  fourth 
act,  where  Pelleas  and  Melisande  uncover  their 
secret. 

The  plot  is  not  a  densely  woven  one.  In  the 
woods  while  hunting  in  a  land  east  of  the  sun 
and  west  of  the  moon,  Golaud,  a  king's  son, 
comes  upon  Melisande  sitting  disconsolate  at 
the  brink  of  a  spring.  She  is  timid  and  would 
flee.  Something  has  happened  to  her  which 
she  does  not  explain,  perhaps  remember.  She 
is  lost,  she  declares,  with  the  passionate  itera- 
tion which  has  become  a  fixed  pattern  in  the 
Maeterlinck  dialogue.  She  has  dropped  into 
the  pool  the  gold  crown  some  one  gave  her  — 
who  it  was  she  never  tells.  A  forlorn  little  prin- 
cess out  of  a  Hans  Christian  Andersen  fairy 
tale.  Golaud  marries  her  offhand  and  brings 
her  to  his  home,  the  castle  of  his  grandfather, 
Arkel,  King  of  Allemonde.  There  his  father 
lies  dying  —  we  never  see  this  shadowy  invalid 
—  and  his  brother  Pellets  lives.  Also  Little 
399 


ICONOCLASTS 

Yniold,  son  of  Golaud,  by  a  former  marriage. 
The  castle  is  malarial,  rickety,  like  many  of 
Maeterlinck's  buildings.  Nearly  all  his  people 
seem  to  suffer  from  swampy  emanations  or  the 
mephitic  gas  of  ancient  dungeons.  The  evil 
odours  of  Arkel's  abode  are  even  alluded  to  in 
this  play. 

Pelleas  and  Melisande  love.  Golaud  suspects 
it,  and  his  jealousy,  mixing  with  his  love  for 
brother  and  wife,  is  delineated  masterfully.  We 
now  begin  to  see  the  fruits  of  the  dramatist's 
careful  study  of  moods.  Evanescent  as  are  the 
moods  of  the  previous  plays,  they  served  as 
spiritual  gymnastics.  With  them  he  proved  his 
ability  to  portray  the  finer  shades  of  terror,  re- 
morse, love,  despair.  In  the  jealousy  of  Golaud 
he  takes  a  step  nearer  the  concrete.  Golaud  is 
a  hunter,  a  man  whose  temples  are  touched  by 
gray.  He  adores  his  child-wife  and  trusts  her. 
He  begs  the  moody  Pelleas  to  wait  upon  her. 
His  marriage  with  her  has  surprised  all,  save 
his  grandfather.  Arke'l  says  :  — 

"  He  has  done  what  he  probably  must  have 
done.  I  am  very  old,  and  nevertheless  I  have 
not  yet  seen  clearly  for  one  moment  into  myself ; 
how  would  you  that  I  judge  what  others  have 
done?"  A  wonderful  man,  indeed.  Pelleas 
wishes  to  visit  his  dying  friend  Marcellus  — 
the  Shakespeare  nomenclature  persists  —  but 
Arke'l  begs  him  to  stay  at  home,  where  death 
approaches. 

Melisande  is  well  received  by  the  King  and 
400 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

Queen.  She  is  astonished  at  the  gloom  of  the 
gardens,  and  is  pleased  with  the  spectacle  of 
the  sea.  In  the  ending  of  Act  I  we  get  a  faint 
premonition  of  disaster.  Pelle"as  and  Melisande 
watch  the  departure  of  the  ship  that  brought 
Melisande.  (Maeterlinck  here  borrows  an  early 
effect  from  The  Seven  Princesses.)  It  flies 
away  under  full  sail. 

Pelleas.  Nothing  can  be  seen  any  longer  on  the 
sea.  .  .  . 

Melisande.   I  see  more  lights. 

Pelleas.  It  is  the  other  lighthouses.  ...  Do  you 
hear  the  sea  ?  It  is  the  wind  rising.  Let  us  go  down 
this  way.  Will  you  give  me  your  hand  ? 

Melisande.    See,  see,  my  hands  are  full. 

Pelleas.  I  will  hold  you  by  the  arm  ;  the  road  is 
steep  and  it  is  very  gloomy  there.  ...  I  am  going 
away,  perhaps,  to-morrow.  .  .  . 

Melisande.   Oh  1  ...     Why  do  you  go  away  ? 

[Curtain. 

Much  sport  has  been  made  of  the  first  scene 
in  this  play.  Yet  it  only  displays  the  poet's 
worship  of  Shakespeare.  Maid-servants  are 
discovered  at  the  castle  gate.  They  gabble  as 
they  knock  for  admission.  It  is  as  prosaic  as 
the  rest  of  the  work  is  poetic.  A  porter  of  the 
"  Anon,  anon,  I  come  "  type  holds  parley.  He 
is  borrowed  from  Macbeth.  However,  it  does 
not  demand  a  close  reading  of  this  episode  to 
discover  that  it  sounds  the  keynote  to  music  — 
always  symbolical  —  of  the  drama  that  follows. 
401 


ICONOCLASTS 


IV 

The  second  act  of  Pelteas  and  Me"lisande 
begins  at  an  immemorial  fountain  in  the  royal 
park.  Here  the  young  Prince  sits  with  the  wife 
of  his  brother.  Me"lisande  is  one  of  the  poet's 
most  successful  full-length  portraits.  She  is 
exquisitely  girlish,  is  charming  with  her  strange 
Undine  airs,  and  is  touched  by  a  singular  atmos- 
phere of  the  remote.  Hauptmann  has  realized 
the  same  ethereal  type  in  Rautendelein.  M6- 
lisande  is  very  romantic.  At  times  she  is  on  the 
point  of  melting  into  the  green  tapestry  of  the 
forest.  She  is  a  woodland  creature.  More 
melancholy  than  Miranda,  she  is  not  without 
traces  of  her  high-bred  temperament ;  less  real 
than  Juliet,  she  seems  quite  as  passion-smitten. 
Not  altogether  a  comprehensible  creation,  Me- 
lisande  piques  one  at  every  reading,  with  her 
waywardness,  her  infantile  change  of  moods. 

At  the  spring  the  two  converse  of  the  water 
and  its  healing  powers  —  "  You  would  say  that 
my  hands  were  sick  to-day,"  she  murmurs  as 
she  dips  her  hand  into  the  pool.  She  loses  her 
wedding  ring.  The  conversation  is  all  as  in- 
direct, as  elliptical,  as  Robert  Browning  or 
Henry  James.  Let  it  be  said  that  the  affecta- 
tion of  understanding  Browning  at  all  points  is 
not  so  banal  as  the  pretence  of  not  understand- 
ing Maeterlinck.  The  symbol  floats  like  a  flag 
in  his  dramas. 

In  the  interim  Golaud  has  been  wounded 
402 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

while  hunting.  It  is  not  serious,  but  it  un- 
looses the  heart  of  Melisande,  who  confesses 
that  she,  too,  is  ill.  With  her  habitual  avoid- 
ance of  the  definite,  she  does  not,  or  will  not, 
tell  her  husband  the  cause  of  her  vague  un- 
rest and  spiritual  nostalgia.  The  interview  is 
affecting.  Golaud,  the  middle-aged,  cannot  over- 
hear the  shell-like  murmurings  of  this  baby  soul. 
She  recounts  the  loss  of  her  wedding  ring,  but 
prevaricates.  Golaud  bids  her  go  search  for  it 
in  company  with  Pell6as —  always  Pelleas.  In 
a  grotto  the  two  again  meet.  The  cave  is  full 
of  "  blue  darks,"  and  outside  the  moon  has  "torn 
through  a  great  cloud."  Suddenly  three  sleep- 
ing beggars  are  discovered  (again  a  recurrence 
to  the  earlier  style).  They  mean  something,  of 
course,  though  they  do  not  awaken.  In  certain 
pages  of  Maeterlinck  it  is  well  to  let  sleeping 
symbols  lie  undisturbed.  The  action  now  moves 
apace.  Pelleas,  fearing  danger,  wishes  to  fly,  but 
is  dissuaded  by  his  grandfather. 

In  Act  III  Pelleas  and  Melisande  sit  and  con- 
verse. Little  Yniold,  with  his  curious  child's  brain 
and  child's  candour,  really  discovers  to  the  lovers 
their  mutual  love.  It  is  done  captivatingly. 

"  You  have  been  weeping,  little  mother,"  he 
says  to  his  mother,  in  his  father's  presence. 
"  Do  not  hold  the  lamp  under  their  eyes  so," 
responds  Golaud.  Then  follows  the  poetic  and 
famous  scene  of  Melisande  on  the  tower  comb- 
ing her  unbound  locks  and  singing  in  the  moon- 
light It  is  a  magical  picture.  One  recalls 
403 


ICONOCLASTS 

Lilith,  that  first  wife  of  Adam,  painted  by 
Rossetti,  who  also  combed  dangerous  silken 
tresses.  Pelteas  enters,  and  the  ensuing  duo- 
logue is  rich  in  tenderness  and  amorous  poetry. 
One  in  vain  endeavours  to  recall  so  intensely 
vivid  a  scene  in  literature  since  Romeo  and 
Juliet.  The  romance  of  the  French  Romantics 
always  verged  on  the  melodramatic  and  arti- 
ficial, and  the  stately  classics  are  not  happy  in 
moments  of  this  kind.  The  similar  scene  in  Cy- 
rano, when  compared  to  Pelleas  and  Melisande, 
is  mere  rococo  pasteboard,  though  theatrically 
effective.  Rostand  is,  at  his  best,  Orientally 
sentimental,  as  befits  his  blood ;  he  is  never  truly 
poetic,  for  he  is  a  winning  rhetorician,  a  "  rhym- 
ing Sardou,"  rather  than  a  dramatic  poet. 

The  mad  apostrophe  to  the  hair  of  Melisande 
is  in  key  with  the  entire  setting  of  this  moving 
tableau.  "  I  have  never  seen  such  hair  as  thine, 
Melisande.  I  see  the  sky  no  longer  through 
thy  locks.  .  .  .  They  are  alive  like  birds  in  my 
hands."  Even  the  surprising  of  the  lovers  by 
the  sleepless  husband  has  nothing  theatric  in  it. 
He  tells  them  that  they  are  children — "what 
children  !  "  —  and  bids  Melisande  not  to  lean  so 
far  out  of  her  window.  In  the  next  scene  we 
see  him  with  Pelleas  in  the  vaults  of  the  castle. 
There  is  something  evil  in  his  heart ;  in  the  brain 
of  Maeterlinck  there  was  Poe  when  he  wrote 
this  episode.  Golaud  leads  Pelleas  through  the 
vault.  Pelleas  almost  stumbles  into  an  abyss  — 
his  brother  has  made  a  misstep.  We  feel  our- 
404 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

selves  listening  here  on  the  brink  of  a  catas- 
trophe that  does  not  happen.  It  recalls  Poe's 
Cask  of  Amontillado. 

A  painful  scene  is  the  questioning  of  little 
Yniold  by  his  father.  He  asked  the  boy  what 
Melisande  and  Pelleas  talked  of  when  together ; 
asked  of  their  movements.  Then  he  lifts  his 
son  to  the  window  and  bids  him  look  on  and 
report.  It  is  masterly  in  its  cruel  directness. 
"  Are  they  near  each  other  ?  "  he  demands. 
"  No,  little  father."  Other  even  more  searching 
questions  follow,  and  when  the  unfortunate  spy 
is  clutched  in  a  fierce  grip  he  cries,  "  Ah,  ah  ! 
little  father,  you  have  hurt  me."  Unconsciously 
Golaud  has  betrayed  his  woful  agitation. 

Melisande  is  pitied  by  Arke'l.  She  replies 
that  she  is  not  unhappy.  He  responds,  "  Perhaps 
you  are  of  those  who  are  unhappy  without  know- 
ing it."  Golaud  enters  and  reproaches  her,  seizes 
her  hair.  Her  consternation  is  great.  She 
gives  vent  to  that  sentence  which  in  England 
convulsed  a  matter-of-fact  audience.  "  I  am  not 
happy.  I  am  not  happy  !  "  The  foredoomed 
lovers  meet  in  the  park.  It  is  the  great  scene 
of  the  piece.  Again  one  must  go  to  Tristan 
and  Isolde,  for  the  lyric  passion  has  the  quality 
of  intense  music;  that  Tristan  and  Pelleas,  of 
which  Jean  Marnold  wrote  so  acutely  in  the 
Mercure  de  France  ;  — 

Tristan   est   Tceuvre  maitresse    du   musicien   Wagner. 
C'est  le  de*fi  de  son  ge"nie  au  temps.     II  eilt  pu  disparaitre 
apres  sans  craindre  1'oubli  ou  diminuer  sa  gloire.     Mais  ce 
405 


ICONOCLASTS 

type  icteal  du  drame  wagndrien,  de  Taveu  meme  du  rdforma- 
teur,  ce  modele  de  1'ceuvre  d'art  de  1'avenir  apparait  quasi- 
ment  impossible  au  theatre.  S'il  y  assomme  les  ddvots  de 
Tope'ra  conventionnel,  son  poeme  ahurit,  lasse  ou  blesse 
les  re'ceptivite's  plus  exigeantes.  Nous  savons,  depuis 
Pelle'as,  que  la  vraie  vie  n'est  pas  forcdment  incompatible 
avec  la  scene  lyrique  ;  qu'un  drame  poignant  y  peut  s'enro- 
ber  de  quelque  symbole  et  s'atourner  de  romantisme,  sans 
cesser  d'etre  humain.  Nous  y  vlmes  une  action  simple 
emplir  une  soirde  sans  chevilles,  des  amants  s'enoncer  sans 
boursouflure,  s'aimer  sans  philtre  et  sans  charades,  et  mourir 
sans  grandiloquence.  Le  pathos  de  Tristan  vient  trop  tard ; 
si  tard,  qu'il  semble  aujourd'hui  a  sa  place  adequate  en 
notre  Ope"ra  toulousain. 

What  Claude  Debussy  has  done  with  this  meet- 
ing in  his  music  drama  Paris  knows.  Speech 
here  in  its  rhapsodic  rush  becomes  music.  And 
it  is  all  poetic  drama  of  the  loftiest  character, 
dealing  with  material  as  old  as  Eve.  The  hus- 
band enters,  slays  his  brother,  and  the  curtain 
falls  on  Melisande  fleeing,  pursued  by  Golaud, 
sword  in  hand. 

The  fifth  act  of  this  play  with  its  depiction  of 
agony  in  the  stern  soul  of  Golaud,  its  death  of 
Melisande,  who  dies  of  a  broken  heart,  is  the 
tragedy  of  souls  distraught.  Even  on  cold 
paper  it  is  emotion-breeding.  Arkel,  as  the 
spokesman  for  Fate,  bids  his  son  not  to  trouble 
the  last  moments  of  Melisande.  She  has  given 
birth  to  a  tiny  image  of  herself,  and,  quite 
frightened  by  the  world  she  has  lived  in,  she 
leaves  it  like  a  bird  scared  to  sudden  flight.  She 
has  loved,  though  it  is  not  with  the  "  guilty " 
love  her  husband  supposed.  He  hovers  over 
406 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

her  couch,  awaiting  the  words  that  will  satisfy 
his  egotistic  passion. 

"  She  must  not  be  disturbed,"  urges  the 
venerable  Arkel.  "  The  human  soul  is  very 
silent.  .  .  .  The  human  soul  likes  to  depart 
alone.  ...  It  surfers  so  timorously.  .  .  .  But 
the  sadness,  Golaud.  .  .  .  The  sadness  of  all 
we  see.  .  .  .  Twas  a  little  being,  so  quiet,  so 
fearful,  and  so  silent.  Twas  a  poor  little  mys- 
terious being  like  everybody."  .  .  . 

Aglavaine  and  Selysette  is  more  shadowy  in  its 
treatment  than  Pelleas  and  Melisande,  and  no 
doubt  to  the  lovers  of  the  "  precious  "  in  Maeter- 
linck more  interesting  than  Monna  Vanna.  It 
deals  with  the  love  of  two  women,  Aglavaine 
and  Selysette,  for  Meleandre.  The  delicacy  of 
technic  displayed  is  almost  inconceivable,  and 
the  note  of  irony,  faint  as  it  is,  enters  a  new 
element  in  this  spiritual  duel.  To  be  brief, 
Aglavaine  is  the  mouthpiece  for  Maeterlinck  in 
his  Treasure  of  the  Humble.  She  is  an  esprit 
fort,  who  attracts  the  husband  of  Selysette  by 
her  beauty  of  soul,  vigour  of  brain,  and  tempera- 
mental intensity.  Poor  Selysette  is  crushed 
between  the  upper  and  nether  millstone  of  the 
man  and  woman.  They  both  love  her  devotedly, 
but  being  of  the  Melisande  type,  in  her  sweet, 
submissive  nature,  she  fades  away  until  death, 
self-sought,  comes.  She  has  a  fragrant  soul, 
and  its  fragrance  exhales  itself  on  her  deathbed. 
The  dynamics  of  love  prove  too  much  for  thih 
creature.  There  is  tragic  pathos  in  her  taking 
407 


ICONOCLASTS 

off,  and  Maeterlinck  is  at  his  best  in  delineating 
the  tower,  with  its  crumbling  walls,  the  wheeling 
birds  frightened  by  the  apparition  of  a  falling 
body,  and  the  terror  and  alarm  of  the  little  sister. 
Less,  much  less,  fitted  for  theatrical  representa- 
tion than  Pelleas  and  Melisande,  this  drama  is 
charged  with  symbolism  and  with  rather  too 
severe  strain  for  its'  poetic  build  —  too  much 
intellectual  freightage.  It  was  composed  after 
the  essays,  and  it  is  because  of  this,  perhaps, 
that  I  find  Aglavaine  just  a  trifle  doctrinaire. 
There  is  wise  and  charming  talk,  the  action  nil. 
We  get  instead  etats  (Tames.  The  two  women 
expand  before  our  eyes;  it  is  a  rare  spiritual 
growth,  psychology  in  the  veritable  sense  of  that 
overworked  word.  Yet  the  friendship  of  Agla- 
vaine slays  Selysette.  There  is  mystery,  beauty, 
of  a  high  order  in  the  play,  and  in  some  things  it 
betrays  a  distinct  advance  upon  its  predecessors. 
Sister  Beatrice  and  Ardiane  and  Barbe  Bleu 
are  librettos  for  music.  The  first  is  a  delightful 
setting  of  that  old  Dutch  legend  made  famil- 
iar to  English  readers  by  John  Davidson  in 
his  The  Ballad  of  a  Nun.  There  are  homely 
pathos  and  mystic  exaltation  in  Maeterlinck's 
interpretation  of  this  nun,  who  left  her  convent 
for  the  love  of  man,  only  to  return,  decades 
later,  wrecked  in  body  and  soul.  But  her  ab- 
sence has  not  been  missed,  for  the  Virgin  Mary 
has  stepped  down  from  her  niche  in  the  hall 
and  played  the  r61e  of  porteress  disguised  as 
the  runaway. 

408 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

Ardiane  married  Bluebeard  and  falls,  like  the 
rest  of  his  wives,  into  the  trap  set  for  them. 
She  defies  the  monster,  and  with  the  help  of  the 
peasants  rescues  them  all  from  the  marvellous 
dungeons  under  the  castle.  But  she  goes  forth 
into  the  world  alone  —  oh,  irony  of  ironies  !  — 
the  others  do  not  care  to  be  rescued.  The  story 
is  told  with  charm  and  brilliancy.  The  author 
discovers  himself  as  a  conteurwiih  a  light,  grace- 
ful, humorous  touch.  It  is  an  ideal  libretto  — 
for  an  ideal  composer.  The  Miracle  of  Saint 
Antony  is  a  comedy  which  was  first  seen  at 
Brussels,  October,  1903.  It  is  a  "  satire  of  bour- 
geois society,"  and  was  well  received. 


Monna  Vanna  was  produced  at  the  Nouveau 
Theatre,  Paris,  May  17,  1902.  In  the  cast 
were  Georgette  Leblanc,  Jean  Froment,  Dar- 
mont,  Lugne-Poe,  and  others.  The  drama  had 
an  immediate  success  and  has  been  played  over 
the  continent.  In  London,  which  will  stand 
any  amount  of  coarseness,  so  it  be  forthright 
and  brutal,  a  public  performance  was  forbidden 
to  Monna  Vanna. 

The  action  of  this  sombre,  fascinating  drama 
is  laid  at  Pisa  near  the  close  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  The  city  is  beleaguered  by  the  army 
of  Prinzevalle  sent  from  Florence.  Within,  the 
city  has  made  desperate  but  ineffectual  resist- 
ance ;  ammunition  and  food  have  given  out. 
409 


ICONOCLASTS 

A  few  hours  and  the  city  will  be  in  the  hands 
of  the  enemy,  will  be  subject  to  sack,  rapine, 
slaughter.  Guido  Colonna  is  at  his  wits'  ends. 
In  the  first  act  we  find  him  in  consultation  with 
his  lieutenants.  His  father,  Marco  Colonna, 
scholar,  virtuoso,  and  philosopher,  has  been  sent 
to  the  camp  of  Prinzevalle.  Xhence  he  returns, 
and  in  a  scene  of  power  and  suspense  he  informs 
his  son  of  the  terms  set  forth  by  the  conqueror. 
There  is  but  one  way  out  of  the  trouble.  With 
rage,  horror,  incredulity,  Guido  Colonna  hears 
that  if  his  wife,  the  high-born  beauty,  Giovanna 
(Monna  Vanna),  goes  to  the  tent  of  the  bar- 
barian captain,  Prinzevalle,  the  siege  will  be  ter- 
minated. 

His  Vanna?  Why?  Who  is  this  demon  out 
of  the  nethermost  hell  that  can  formulate  such 
a  vile  condition?  The  father  calmly  explains. 
Prinzevalle  is  not  a  barbarian,  but  a  Hercules  in 
strength  and  beauty.  He  is  cultivated.  He  has 
never  seen  Vanna.  He  desires  the  unknown.  He 
has  the  thirst  for  the  infinite  which  characterizes 
great  dreamers,  poets,  generals,  madmen  of  the 
ideal.  If  Monna  Vanna  is  sent  to  his  tent,  a  living 
sacrifice,  in  return  he  will  give  bread,  meat,  wine, 
gunpowder,  arms,  to  the  starving,  vanquished  city. 
Guido  laughs  at  such  an  insane  offer.  Marco  tells 
him  that  the  city  council  knows  of  it — that — yes, 
Vanna  has  heard  it.  She  is  at  that  moment  com- 
ing to  speak  to  her  husband.  He  is  stupefied  to 
learn  that  the  council  has  spurned  the  offer.  But 
Vanna  has  to  be  counted  with. 
410 


MAURICE    MAETERLINCK 

Her  decision  that,  Judith-like,  she  will  go  forth 
to  this  Holophernes,  maddens  her  husband  be- 
yond endurance.  In  an  exciting  scene  he 
accuses  her  of  knowing  Prinzevalle,  of  being 
unfaithful  to  her  marriage  vows  in  thought. 
He  loads  his  father  with  opprobrium.  The 
curtain  falls  on  Vanna  as  she  leaves,  Guido 
telling  her  that  she  will  never  return  to  him  the 
same. 

Act  II :  Tent  of  Prinzevalle.  We  have  ad- 
mirable opportunities  to  study  the  man's  charac- 
ter, virile,  upright,  fearless,  poetic,  melancholy, 
through  his  interviews  with  his  faithful  secretary 
and  Trivulzio,  the  emissary  of  the  Florentine 
government.  The  siege  has  lasted  too  long ; 
Prinzevalle  has  waxed  too  powerful,  a  conspir- 
acy has  been  formed  against  him.  He  is  to  be 
deposed,  assassinated.  He  finds  all  this  in  his 
conversation  with  the  lying,  base  Trivulzio. 
The  episode  has  an  antique  quality.  Trivulzio 
attempts  an  attack,  but  is  easily  repulsed,  though 
he  receives  a  slight  wound  in  the  face,  warning 
Prinzevalle  meanwhile  that  by  daybreak  he  will 
be  deposed,  ruined.  There  is  nothing  left  then 
but  the  improbable  acceptance  by  Guido  Colonna 
and  his  virtuous  spouse  of  the  hard  condition 
he  has  imposed  upon  them. 

She  approaches.  She  has  been  saluted  by 
the  sentries.  Prinzevalle  is  amazed.  She  is 
enveloped  in  a  long  cloak  —  beneath  it  she  is  a 
Lady  Godiva.  The  meeting  is  one  of  the  most 
curious  in  dramatic  literature.  Gustave  Flau- 
411 


ICONOCLASTS 

bert  had  anticipated  it  in  Salammbo,  but  the 
daughter  of  Hamilcar  was  a  barbarian,  after  all, 
and  Matho's  love  for  her  brutal.  The  souls  of 
Maeterlinck's  pair  are  set  before  us  with  clear- 
ness, force,  and  solemnity.  The  aptitude  for 
dissection  of  motive  displayed  by  the  poet  in  his 
previous  work  is  revealed  here  with  splendid 
results.  It  is  all  natural  —  as  natural  as  such  a 
situation  can  be  —  and  the  dismay  of  the  noble 
woman  is  mitigated  somewhat  when  she  dis- 
covers Prinzevalle  has  known  her,  has  always 
loved  her,  that  he  means  her  no  harm.  By 
degrees  she  extorts  the  truth  from  him. 

He  is  the  playmate  of  her  happiest  hours ; 
for  her  he  has  moved  mountains.  Fresh  from 
the  insulting  insinuations  of  her  husband,  her 
head  aflame  with  her  exalted  mission,  she  begins 
to  see  her  life  as  it  really  is.  No,  she  does  not 
precipitate  herself  into  his  arms !  The  transi- 
tion is  infinitely  more  subtle  than  could  be 
accomplished  by  most  modern  playwrights.  It 
is  atmospheric.  The  dialogue  leads  us  through 
the  avenues  of  this  strangely  reunited  couple. 
He  is  all  passion  and  tenderness.  She  —  curi- 
osity has  given  way  to  remembrance.  At  the 
end  he  goes  to  Pisa  with  her,  her  captive ;  while 
radiant,  unharmed,  she  hastes  to  her  husband 
and  fellow-countrymen.  The  promised  stores 
have  been  sent;  Prinzevalle  deserts  the  cause 
of  Florence  —  he  is  not  a  Florentine,  and  as  his 
life  is  in  danger  his  defection  may  be  pardoned. 
And  he  loves.  Stella  Hohenfels  in  this  scene 
412 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

quite  surpassed  herself  at  the  Hofburg  Theatre, 
Vienna,  where  I  witnessed  a  capital  performance 
of  the  play  in  1903,  with  Joseph  Kainz,  Reimers, 
and  others  in  the  cast. 

Daring  as  is  this  act,  the  next  outgenerals  it 
in  surprises.  Vanna  marches  through  the  re- 
joicing city,  lighted  as  for  a  feast.  She  is  con- 
ducted as  a  conqueror  to  her  husband.  Then 
begins  the  struggle.  He  repulses  her,  heaping 
upon  her  vile  phrases.  Yes,  she  has  saved 
Pisa,  but  how?  Where  is  the  honour  of  the 
Colonna  ?  She  implores,  explains,  denies, 
affirms.  But  when  Guido  learns  the  name  of 
the  silent  warrior  who  has  accompanied  her,  his 
rage  is  boundless.  It  is  her  lover  that  she  hales 
back  as  a  slave  to  show  her  triumph.  There  is 
enough  meat  in  this  act  to  furnish  forth  a  gross 
of  modern  nerveless,  boneless,  bloodless  abor- 
tions of  drama  now  before  the  footlights.  As  a 
specimen  of  the  romantic  drama  with  the  accom- 
paniment of  a  profound  psychology,  Monna 
Vanna  makes  modern  French  works  of  the 
papier-mache"  type  droop  like  fresh  flowers  in  a 
thunderstorm. 

Incredulously  the  infuriated  husband  hears 
that  Prinzevalle  has  made  no  advances  to  Vanna. 
It  is  too  much.  Why,  then,  is  he  here  ?  he 
demands.  He  claims  the  head  of  Prinzevalle. 
Vanna  jumps  into  the  mob  of  soldiers,  crying 
that  she  has  lied,  lied  abominably.  Prinzevalle 
seized  her,  she  declares,  and  to  defend  herself 
she  has  wounded  him.  Behold  his  face  —  which 
4*3 


ICONOCLASTS 

shows  the  marks  of  his  struggle  with  the  Flor- 
entine emissary,  Trevulzio. 

It  is  a  striking  situation.  In  the  heyday  of 
his  glory  Sardou  never  devised  anything  more 
theatrically  effective  —  setting  aside  considera- 
tion of  the  psychologic  imbroglio.  Vanna  then 
claims  Prinzevalle  as  her  spoils  of  war.  To  the 
victor  belongs  the  vanquished.  Colonna,  de- 
spite Prinzevalle's  assertion  that  Vanna's  lie  is 
another  lie,  is  handed  over  to  the  care  of  Van- 
na's people.  In  a  swift  "  aside  "  she  commands 
silence.  She  loves  him,  she  whispers.  Marco 
understands  —  understands  the  manner  in  which 
Vanna  will  be  revenged  upon  Prinzevalle  and 
also  upon  her  husband  for  his  disbelief.  The 
latter  now  disclaims  his  former  doubts.  Let 
her  work  her  vengeance  upon  the  man  she 
has  captured.  But  for  her  all  that  has  gone  be- 
fore in  her  entire  life  is  as  a  bad  dream.  The 
real,  the  beautiful  life,  the  dream,  is  at  hand. 
It  will  be  her  revenge.  She  must  go  at  once 
to  her  prisoner,  to  Prinzevalle  in  his  cell  —  the 
curtain  falls. 

There  are  weak  spots  in  the  scheme  which 
tax  one's  credulity.  Something  of  the  improb- 
able must  be  granted  a  dramatist  be  he  never  so 
logical.  The  rapid  mental  change  of  Vanna 
hints  at  a  nature  naturally  casuistical,  as  were 
no  doubt  many  Italians  of  the  Renascence. 
Her  love  for  Colonna  could  never  have  been 
deep-rooted.  But  she  did  not  betray  him,  and 
yet  she  has  been  adjudged  profoundly  immoral 
414 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

—  in  a  word,  not  to  put  too  fine  an  edge  upon 
the  sophistries  of  the  situation,  this  heroine  com- 
mitted an  imaginative  infidelity  as  well  as  tell- 
ing a  falsehood.  The  madness  of  the  finale  is 
but  the  logical  outcome  of  her  love  for  Prinze- 
valle.  Few  plays,  however,  reveal  their  complete 
essence  in  the  mere  reading.  And  the  cryptic 
stammering,  the  arrested  spasms,  of  Maeter- 
linck's earlier  style  vanish  quite  in  the  action  of 
Monna  Vanna. 

I  have  dwelt  perhaps  to  lengths  upon  the 
spiritual  development  of  the  man,  —  those  who 
run  may  follow  his  material  progress,  —  but  the 
reason  is  simple :  the  soul  of  Maeterlinck  is  in 
his  plays.  That  he  is  a  creative  thinker  is  not 
asserted.  He  has  studied  deeply  the  wisdom  of 
the  ancients,  of  the  moderns.  He  knows  Emer- 
son and  Moliere.  He  knows  Saint  Teresa  and 
John  of  the  Cross.  Conceive  an  artistic  tempera- 
ment that  seeks  the  phrase  for  itself  as  did  Wal- 
ter Pater ;  that  loves  the  soul  of  humanity  as  did 
Robert  Browning  ;  that  seeks  a  dramatic  synthe- 
sis for  his  poetry,  philosophy,  rhetoric  —  and 
you  have  this  man.  His  Flemish  fond  may 
account  for  his  mystic  temperament,  for  his 
preoccupation  with  things  of  the  spirit,  and  yet 
how  difficult  it  is  to  place  the  critical  finger  on 
this  quality  and  that  quality,  as  if  on  the  bumps 
of  the  phrenologist,  and  say  —  here  is  the  real 
Maurice  Maeterlinck ! 


415 


ICONOCLASTS 

VI 

Passers-by  on  the  Boulevard,  the  summer  of 
1903,  stared  at  the  Gymnase  Theatre,  which 
bore  the  inscription :  Le  Theatre  Maeterlinck. 
Certainly  such  an  institution  as  the  Maeterlinck 
Theatre  was  undreamed  of  a  decade  ago  by  the 
poet's  most  fanatical  adherents. 

However,  there  it  stood,  this  affiche  ;  and  there 
it  stood  the  night  I  stumbled  through  the  semi- 
obscurity  of  the  well-known  house  to  my  loge. 
The  criticisms  of  the  new  play  had  not  been  re- 
assuring ;  a  second  Monna  Vanna  was  not  to  be 
expected  ;  a  return  to  Maeterlinck's  earlier  man- 
ner was  unthinkable,  so  I  confess  that  I  awaited 
the  parting  of  the  curtains  with  a  fair  amount 
of  curiosity.  I  was  not  disappointed  when  the 
first  scene  disclosed  a  loggia  of  a  Renascence 
palazzo.  This  setting  sounded  the  keynote  — 
and  a  very  beautiful,  delicate  note  it  was,  for  the 
author  has  been  as  careful  in  the  mounting  of 
this  play  as  he  was  indifferent  in  his  first  essays. 
Signor  Rovescalli  of  Milan  had  carried  out  the 
designs  of  Charles  Doudelet  with  fidelity  and 
taste.  The  Pinturicchio  costumes  are  all  from 
the  same  hands.  Nothing  —  except  the  lighting 
—  has  been  omitted  that  might  add  to  the  in- 
carnation of  this  dream  —  for  a  dream  play 
Joyzelle  is,  full  of  strange  hypnotic  action  and 
phrases  that  haunt. 

The  piece,  which  is  called  a  Conte  d'Amour, 
is  in  five  short  acts.  It  is  confined  to  four  char- 
416 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

acters,  two  of  which  carry  the  slight  thread  of 
story.  In  style  it  is  midway  between  Maeter- 
linck's earlier  manner  and  Monna  Vanna.  It 
might,  if  considered  in  historic  sequence,  have 
been  written  before  Monna  Vanna,  and  thus 
could  have  furnished  the  link  between  the  static 
and  the  dynamic  theatre  of  this  poet.  Coming 
after  the  Italian  tragedy  of  hot  blood,  it  seems 
like  a  casting  back  to  an  earlier  manner.  But  it 
is  not.  There  is  more  action  than  in  any  play, 
—  Vanna  excepted,  —  more  than  in  Pelleas  and 
Melisande.  There  are  passion  and  climax  that 
come  perilously  nearer  theatricalism  than  any- 
thing Maeterlinck  has  yet  written,  though  he 
steers  around  the  banal,  avoiding  it  by  a  hair- 
breadth. Admirers  of  the  dramatist's  repressed 
style  must  have  taken  a  deep  breath  as  the  epi- 
sode of  the  attempted  assassination  developed 
into  something  quite  unexpected. 

Joyzelle  is  little  more  than  a  series  of  situa- 
tions, in  which  the  heroine  is  tested  by  the  stern 
old  enchanter  Merlin.  When  I  called  upon  the 
poet  at  his  picturesque  little  house  in  Passy,  I 
asked  him  about  The  Tempest,  which  the  critics 
one  and  all  saw  in  his  play.  He  smiled  and 
replied  that  Shakespeare  was  a  good  point  of 
departure.  Could  there  be  a  better  one  ?  The 
resemblance  is  rather  superficial.  Prospero  and 
Miranda  are,  in  the  mysterious  island  of  Maeter- 
linck, Merlin  and  Lanceor  —  the  latter  the  magi- 
cian's son ;  and  Joyzelle  is,  if  you  will,  a  female 
Ferdinand  come  to  woo  the  youth. 
417 


ICONOCLASTS 

The  changes  to  be  rung  on  such  a  theme  are 
not  a  few.  But  Maeterlinck  has  elected  to  intro- 
duce a  new  and  more  disturbing  element.  It  is 
Arielle,  the  subconscious  nature  of  Merlin,  who 
always  warns  him  of  impending  danger.  Instead 
of  the  old-fashioned  soliloquy,  we  are  given,  be- 
cause of  this  dualism,  dialogues  between  Merlin 
and  his  subliminal  self.  This  sounds  terribly 
metaphysical,  but  as  treated  by  Maeterlinck 
Merlin's  alter  ego  —  his  doppelganger,  as  the  Ger- 
man mystics  have  it  —  is  a  charming  young 
woman  attired  in  gray  and  purple,  minor  in  key. 
If  she  is  his  constant  mentor,  he  has  also 
the  power  of  projecting  her  into  the  visible 
world  —  materializing,  the  spiritualists  call  it; 
and  as  Klingsor  tempted  Parsifal  by  transform- 
ing Kundry  into  a  seductive  shape,  so  Merlin 
uses  Arielle  as  an  agent  of  temptation  against 
his  son,  his  weak  and  handsome  Lanceor. 

The  plot  is  slight.  Love,  a  very  passionate, 
earthly  love,  is  the  theme.  Doubtless  Maeter- 
linck intends  the  entire  conte  as  a  symbol ; 
theatre-goers  will  be  more  interested  in  its  ex- 
ternal garb.  Briefly,  Merlin  interrogates  the 
sleeping  Arielle  and  learns  that  his  son  Lanceor, 
who  has  just  arrived  on  the  island,  is  at  the 
crisis  of  his  life.  "Le  destin  de  ton  fils  est 
inscrit  tout  entier  dans  un  cercle  d'amour." 
He  is  condemned  by  the  Fates  to  die  within  the 
month  if  he  does  not  find  a  perfect  love,  and  to 
this  love  all  is  permitted,  even  crime.  If  the 
girl  upon  whom  he  casts  his  eyes  will  sacrifice 
418 


MAURICE    MAETERLINCK 

all  for  her  love,  then  happiness  will  be  his  portion. 
We  are  plunged  into  a  fairy  land  at  the  first 
words  of  Merlin.  This  gift  of  evoking  an  atmos- 
phere in  a  few  phrases  is  Maeterlinck's  own. 
All  resemblance  to  Shakespeare's  folk  vanishes 
as  the  scheme  is  unfolded.  At  first  we  see 
Merlin  addressing  Arielle.  When  she  sleeps 
he  loses  his  force  and  so  he  awakens  her.  After 
learning  Lanceor's  destiny,  he  resolves  to  be  on 
his  guard.  Joyzelle  is  cast  up  by  the  sea,  and, 
encountering  Lanceor,  the  inflammable  pair  fall 
madly  in  love  with  each  other.  Nothing  can 
come  between,  or  if  any  one  does  — !  Lanceor 
is  more  assured  than  Joyzelle  that  this  is  his  first, 
his  perfect  passion.  But  Merlin,  who  pretends 
anger,  as  does  Prospero,  resolves  to  test  the 
newly  kindled  flame.  He  threatens  to  kill  Joy- 
zelle if  she  meets  Lanceor,  but  she  defies  him, 
and  refuses  to  bind  herself  to  any  promise  im- 
posed upon  her.  To  a  sonorous  and  emphatic 
Non  !  the  curtain  intervenes. 

Merlin  now  devises  a  series  of  tests  for  his 
son.  Like  Marco  Colonna  in  Monna  Vanna, 
he  would  be  cruel  only  to  be  kind.  The  first 
is  the  trial  by  separation.  In  a  lonely  tower 
Lanceor  is  found  by  Joyzelle.  The  place  is  as 
forbidding  as  the  country  of  Browning's  Childe 
Roland.  Joyzelle  calls  to  Lanceor,  who  rushes 
to  her  arms.  As  they  embrace  each  other, 
trees  put  on  full  bloom,  flowers  carpet  the 
ground,  and  all  nature  bursts  into  life  — 
only  the  order  of  decay  and  bloom  is  reversed 
419 


ICONOCLASTS 

Then  Merlin  has  Lanceor  bitten  by  a  serpent, 
and  falling  into  a  magic  slumber  Arielle  appears, 
and  he  finds  her  instead  of  Joyzelle,  who  has 
been  sternly  sent  away.  She  returns  only  to 
find  her  lover  desperately  enamoured  of  a  strange 
woman.  Even  this  does  not  shake  her  faith. 
She  refuses  to  believe  the  treachery  of  Lanceor. 
After  Arielle  has  departed,  in  a  scene  of  singu- 
lar power  he  drives  forth  his  patient  Griselidis. 
It  is  almost  brutal  in  its  intensity. 

In  Act  III  Arielle  bids  Merlin  leave  Lanceor 
and  seize  Joyzelle  for  himself,  —  a  genuine 
subconscious  suggestion  this !  In  the  security 
of  her  wonderful  love  he  may  find  safety 
from  that  Viviane,  who  later  saps  his  soul  in 
the  old-world  wood  of  Broceliande.  Joyzelle 
is  proof  against  the  most  insidious  temptations, 
and  in  the  trial  by  faith  she  emerges  trium- 
phantly. Merlin  suddenly  commands  her  to  look 
around,  and  she  will  see  Lanceor  held  captive  in 
the  arms  of  another.  She  moves  away  without 
turning  her  head,  thus  averting  the  fate  of  a 
second  Lot's  wife.  The  spectator,  drugged  by 
this  time,  begins  to  wonder  if  this  paragon  has 
an  Achilles  heel.  Merlin  is  quite  as  envious, 
for  in  the  next  trial  he  causes  Lanceor  —  poor 
Lanceor !  —  to  be  brought  nigh  death's  door, 
and  Joyzelle,  rendered  desperate,  throws  herself 
at  the  cruel  parent's  feet.  She  promises  to  fulfil 
any  condition  he  may  see  fit  in  his  caprice  to 
impose.  Impose  one  he  does.  If  Lanceor  is 
restored  to  health,  will  she  become  Merlin's  bride 
420 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

instead  of  the  son's  ?  This,  it  must  be  admitted, 
is  a  very  ingenious  form  of  torture,  and  yet,  when 
in  the  bigness  of  her  soul  Joyzelle  acquiesces, 
we  feel  that  another  bead  has  been  touched  in 
this  rosary  of  pain. 

How  to  extricate  the  girl  from  her  grave  posi- 
tion ?  Lanceor's  good  looks  have  been  spoiled 
by  his  illness  —  a  mere  trifle  for  this  insatiable 
creature.  In  the  last  act  Merlin  lies  sleeping, 
Arielle  on  guard.  Joyzelle  approaches,  her  face 
set  in  despair,  yet  firm  in  her  purpose  to  fulfil 
her  destiny.  She  has  promised.  Lanceor  has 
been  saved.  She  will  pay.  As  she  reaches  the 
couch  of  the  magician  she  plucks  forth  a  dagger 
and  would  have  bloody  murder.  This  is  the 
supreme  test  —  rather  a  disquieting  doctrine  to 
the  passivists  and  gentle  persons  who  feed  on 
Maeterlinck's  balmy  philosophies.  Love  that 
does  not  flinch  at  crime  is  the  keystone  to  this 
little  arch  of  a  play.  Merlin  is  satisfied.  Joyzelle 
has  undergone  his  tests.  She  is  the  perfect 
woman  for  Lanceor's  perfect  love.  The  two  are 
united,  and  the  lovely  landscape  fades  from  our 
view  like  the  misty  pictures  in  a  Chopin  Ballade. 

Ideal  love  is  the  motive  of  this  new  play,  love 
that  will  march  to  the  jaws  of  hell,  if  needs  be, 
for  the  beloved  one ;  Orpheus  and  Eurydice,  Hero 
and  Leander,  or  any  other  enamoured  couple 
come  to  your  memory  as  the  ingenuous  Joyzelle, 
who  has  not  a  faint  trace  of  humour  in  her,  pro- 
ceeds gravely  to  the  unpleasant  tasks  set  her  by 
Merlin.  I  could  not  help  recalling  that  Princess 
421 


ICONOCLASTS 

Istar,  —  set  to  music  by  d'Indy,, — who  goes  down 
into  Hades  and  at  each  of  its  seven  gates  casts 
away  a  part  of  her  belongings.  At  the  seventh 
and  last  gate  she  has  remaining  only  her  naked- 
ness. Maeterlinck  removes  leaf  after  leaf  from 
the  flower-like  soul  of  Joyzelle  until  its  very  core 
is  reached. 

While  she  bears  a  sisterly  resemblance  to 
many  of  his  naive  infantile  women,  she  is  nearer 
related  to  Monna  Vanna  in  her  affirmative  na- 
ture. She  is  very  full-blooded  for  a  dream 
maiden,  and  at  times  she  showed  something  of 
Sardou's  tigress-like  creatures.  Possibly  one 
received  this  impression  because  Georgette 
Leblanc,  who  originated  the  title  role,  has  evi- 
dently been  a  close  student  of  Sarah  Bernhardt's 
methods.  As  is  the  case  with  modern  feministe 
writers — were  there  ever  ancient  ones?  —  the 
woman  is  enthroned,  she  is  the  Eternal  Womanly, 
and  she  has  the  final  word  in  the  destiny  of 
things,  as  in  Goethe's  poem.  Lanceor  does  not 
appear  in  an  undesirable  light,  while  Merlin 
represents  Wisdom  and  makes  very  Maeter- 
linckian  speeches.  His  final  words  are  full  of 
the  sober  dignity  we  expect  from  the  author  of 
Wisdom  and  Destiny. 

In  Joyzelle  the  words  count  for  something,  no 
matter  what  the  author  intends  them  to  convey 
by  the  "  second  intention."  He  once  wrote 
"  Les  hommes  ont  je  ne  sais  quelle  peur  etrange 
de  la  beaute"."  This  strange  fear  the  young 
Belgian  Merlin  evokes  of  his  own  accord.  We 
422 


MAURICE    MAETERLINCK 

sense  the  beauty,  but  are  uncomfortable  in  its 
presence.  Human  beings  or  semi-humans  must 
act  to  reveal  themselves.  This  they  do  in  Joy- 
zelle.  There  can  be  no  reproach  here  of  the 
abuse  of  the  "  static,"  only  the  action  and  words 
—  couched  in  harmonious  prose  —  do  not  quite 
summon  reality  to  us. 

The  disembodied  thoughts  of  the  poet  are 
given  a  local  habitation  and  a  name,  and  still 
they  remain  thoughts,  abstractions;  they  are 
not  of  our  flesh  and  blood,  but  seem  to  inhabit 
that  "  Third  Kingdom "  Ibsen  has  foretold. 
More  "  interior  "  than  Monna  Vanna,  Joyzelle 
is  hardly  apt  to  be  appreciated.  I  feel  quite 
sure  that  many  of  the  adjectives  lavished  upon  it 
by  the  Parisian  press  were  not  sincere.  As  a 
race  the  French  cannot  be  in  sympathy  with  the 
gray,  slow,  poetic  images  of  this  Belgian  mystic. 

I  had  read  Walkley's  capital  book  on  Dra- 
matic Criticism,  and  after  the  performance  of  Joy- 
zelle I  opened  its  pages  and  saw  this  :  "  So,  says 
Coleridge,  stage  presentations  are  to  produce  a 
sort  of  temporary  half  faith,  which  the  spectator 
encourages  in  himself  and  supports  by  a  volun- 
tary contribution  on  his  own  part,  because  he 
knows  that  it  is  at  all  times  in  his  power  to  see 
the  thing  as  it  really  is.  Thus  the  true  stage 
illusion  as  to  a  forest  scene  consists  —  not  in  the 
mind's  judging  it  to  be  a  forest,  but  in  its  remis- 
sion of  the  judgment  that  it  is  not  a  forest." 

Joyzelle,  then,  would  be  the  negation  of  the 
drama  did  we  not  allow  for  Coleridge's  "  remis- 
423 


ICONOCLASTS 

sion."  If  we  can  shut  our  eyes  to  the  pure 
idealism  of  Arielle,  and  see,  as  the  poet  intends 
us  to  do,  a  little  love  tale,  our  enjoyment  would 
be  materially  heightened.  Theories  hamper ; 
so  does  criticism.  And  the  unhappiest  critic 
of  the  drama  is  he  who  approaches  his  author 
consciously.  As  in  music,  so  in  much  of  the 
Maeterlinckian  drama,  nothing  happens,  and  if 
we  could  be  content  to  abandon  ourselves  on  the 
waves  of  the  dramatist's  fantasy,  our  pleasure 
would  be  tenfold  enhanced.  This  is  the  attitude 
in  which  one  receives  music.  Why  not  adopt 
its  receptivity  in  Maeterlinck's  case?  for  his 
plays  are  as  near  the  inarticulateness  of  music 
as  they  dare  to  be  and  still  retain  sober 
lineaments. 

The  performance  was  a  delight  throughout. 
Every  person  in  the  cast  is  an  artist,  and  as  Joy- 
zelle  I  had  an  excellent  opportunity  to  study  the 
personality  and  art  of  Georgette  Leblanc,  —  now 
Mme.  Maeterlinck, — for  whom  Monna  Vanna 
was  written.  A  versatile  woman,  Leblanc  was 
originally  in  opera.  She  has  sung  Tha'fs,  Sapho, 
Navarraise,  Carmen,  Franchise  in  L'Attaque  au 
Moulin,  the  Bruneau-Zola  music  drama,  and  has 
played  over  Europe  with  unbounded  success 
Charlotte  Corday  and  Monna  Vanna.  As  an 
interpreter  of  the  lieder  literature  of  Schumann, 
Schubert,  Brahms,  and  the  new  Frenchmen  and 
Belgians,  Gabriel  Faure\  d'Indy,  Claude  Debussy, 
Georgette  Leblanc  has  also  won  praise.  And 
her  voice  was  never  a  great  one.  She  has  sung 
424 


MAURICE    MAETERLINCK 

by  the  grace  of  God,  as  our  German  brethren 
say,  and  as  a  diseuse  she  has  won  more  success 
than  as  a  singer.  She  is  distinctly  a  personality. 
Her  hair  is  wonderfully  red,  the  mask  of  her 
face  a  peculiarly  expressive  one.  You  recall 
those  old  portraits  by  the  masters,  of  some  un- 
known woman,  whose  eyes  follow  you  from  the 
canvas,  eyes  that  peer  beneath  tumbled  tresses, 
surmounted  by  an  imperial  Gainsborough  hat  of 
velvet.  She  is  given  to  the  picturesque  in  daily 
life,  and  has  written  a  clever  volume  of  essays 
all  her  own  in  style  and  idea. 

As  an  actress,  I  should  say  that  Leblanc  was 
halfway  in  her  methods  between  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt  and  —  Georgette  Leblanc.  She  has  great 
facility  of  speech,  is  plastic  in  her  poses,  in- 
dulges in  those  serpentine,  undulating  move- 
ments we  have  long  since  recognized  as  Sarah's 
own.  Do  not  mistake ;  Mme.  Leblanc  has  a 
pronounced  individuality.  She  is  herself.  Her 
intonations  are  her  own.  But  she  has  such 
velocity  and  clarity  of  diction,  has  such  tempera- 
mental energy,  plays  a  role  with  such  swiftness, 
that  Bernhardt  is  inevitably  suggested.  As 
Monna  Vanna  she  is  more  successful  than  as 
Joyzelle.  The  abundant  nervous  energy  of  the 
woman  ill  brooks  long  periods  of  repose,  and 
Joyzelle  is  more  like  a  Burne-Jones  maiden  than 
the  fiery  lover  of  Prinzevalle.  Leblanc  was  in- 
tense in  all  the  climaxes,  and  her  denotements 
of  joy,  love,  hatred,  and  overwhelming  desola- 
tion were  alike  admirable.  She  has  expressive 
425 


ICONOCLASTS 

features,  though  they  are  irregular  —  few  women 
would  call  her  good-looking.  (Note  the  discrimi- 
nation of  sex  !)  She  nevertheless  made  a  charm- 
ing Joyzelle,  and  spoke  her  husband's  cadenced 
lines  with  the  exact  feeling  for  their  exquisite 
rhythms. 

VII 

Experience  of  a  saddening  sort  taught  me 
that  a  man  and  his  works  are  twain ;  that  a 
poet  never  looks  like  a  poet;  a  composer  is 
seldom  harmonious  in  private  life.  Yet  I  could 
not  be  but  tempted  when  a  brief,  courteous  note 
from  the  author  of  Monna  Vanna  informed  me 
that  he  would  give  me  an  evening  hour  for  an 
informal  interview.  Maeterlinck  lives  on  the 
Rue  Reynouard  in  a  small  house,  the  garden  of 
which  overlooks  the  Seine  from  the  moderate 
heights  of  Passy.  To  reach  his  apartments  I 
had  to  traverse  a  twisted  courtyard,  several 
mysterious  staircases  built  on  the  corkscrew 
model,  and  finally  was  ushered  into  an  ante- 
chamber full  of  screens,  old  engravings,  fans, 
much  ornamental  brass,  and  reproductions  of 
Mantegna,  Rossetti,  Burne-Jones,  and  other 
symbolistic  painters. 

But  I  was  not  to  abide  there  long.  A  maid 
with  doubting  eyes  piloted  me  across  a  narrow 
hallway,  through  a  room  where  sat  a  tirewoman 
altering  theatrical  costumes  —  and  at  last  I  was 
not  in  M.  Maeterlinck's  presence.  Not  yet. 
420 


MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

Down  another  staircase,  and  the  great  man 
loomed  up  in  cycling  costume,  cordial,  grave, 
a  handsome  fellow  with  big,  Flemish  bones, 
a  small,  round  head,  and  wavy  hair  dappling  at 
the  temples.  A  man  past  forty,  a  gentle,  pen- 
sive sort  of  man,  Maurice  Maeterlinck  does  not 
look  like  his  photographs  for  the  reason  that 
they  were  taken  nearly  a  decade  ago.  He  is 
much  older,  much  more  vigorous,  than  I  pic- 
tured him.  The  general  race  characteristics 
are  Flemish  or  Belgian  —  that  is,  Germanic 
and  not  Gallic.  This  he  knows  well  and  realizes 
that  his  work  must  ever  be  exotic  to  the  logical 
mind  of  the  Frenchman,  for  whom  the  form  is 
ever  paramount  to  the  idea. 

Maeterlinck's  eyes  are  what  the  French  call 
flowers  of  the  head.  A  gray  blue,  with  hints  of 
green,  they  are  melancholy  eyes,  these,  with  long, 
dark  lashes.  He  is  extremely  modest,  even  diffi- 
dent, though  touch  him  on  his  favourite  theme 
and  he  responds  readily.  A  devourer  of  Eng- 
lish literature,  he  will  not  venture  into  conversa- 
tion in  our  tongue,  for  he  has  had  little  practice. 
German  he  speaks,  and  he  knows  Italian.  He 
told  me  that  in  composing  Monna  Vanna,  he 
read  Sismondi  for  a  year  so  as  to  get  historical 
colour.  He  was  quite  frank  about  the  concep- 
tion of  this  play. 

"  I  wrote  it  for  Mme.  Maeterlinck,"  he  re- 
marked simply,  which  disposed  of  my  theory 
that  the  piece  was  written  to  prove  he  knew 
how  to  make  a  drama  on  conventional  lines. 
427 


ICONOCLASTS 

Joyzelle  was  also  written  for  the  same  actress, 
a  woman  who  has  played  an  important  role  in 
the  poet's  life.  Then  I  brought  up  Browning's 
Luria  and  the  opinion  of  Professor  Phelps  of 
Yale  that  Maeterlinck  had  profited  by  reading 
the  English  poet  when  he  composed  Monna 
Vanna.  M.  Maeterlinck  smiled. 

"  Naturally  I  read  Browning ;  who  does  not  ?  " 
he  said,  with  the  naYve  intonation  that  becomes 
him  so  well.  "  Luria  I  have  known  for  a  long 
time,  but  Luria  is  not  a  stage  play ; "  which, 
coming  from  the  author  of  Les  Aveugles,  I  con- 
sidered sublime.  He  is  quite  right  —  Monna 
Vanna  and  Luria  have  little  in  common  except 
that  the  scenes  of  both  are  laid  at  Pisa,  and  that 
both  Luria  and  Prinzevalle  were  treated  badly 
by  an  ungrateful  country.  But  then,  so  was 
Coriolanus  and  a  host  of  other  historical  patriots. 
Maeterlinck  spoke  of  Shakespeare  as  other  men 
mention  their  deity.  He  knows  Poe  very  well, 
and  also  Walt  Whitman. 

A  study  of  Maeterlinck's  art  reveals  the  evolu- 
tion of  a  mystic,  the  creation  of  a  dream  thea- 
tre, the  master  of  a  mystic  positivism.  In  Edgar 
Quinet's  romance,  Merlin,  we  read  of  a  visit  made 
by  the  magician  to  Prester  John  at  his  abbey. 
This  abbey  is  an  astounding  conglomeration  of 
architectures  —  pagoda,  mosque,  basilica,  Greek 
temple,  synagogue,  cathedral,  Byzantine  and 
Gothic  chapels,  turrets,  minarets,  and  towers  in 
bewildering  array.  Prester  John  is  a  venerable 
man  with  a  long,  white  beard.  "  Upon  his  head 
428 


MAURICE    MAETERLINCK 

he  wore  a  turban  enriched  with  a  sapphire  cross 
At  his  neck  hung  a  golden  crescent,  and  he  sup- 
ported himself  upon  a  staff  after  the  manner  of 
a  Brahman.  Three  children  followed  him,  who 
carried  each  upon  the  breast  an  open  book. 
The  first  was  the  collection  of  the  Vedas,  the 
second  was  the  Bible,  the  third  the  Koran.  At 
certain  moments  Prester  John  stopped  and  read 
a  few  lines  from  one  of  the  sacred  volumes ; 
after  which  he  continued  his  walk,  his  eyes 
fixed  upon  the  stars." 

Maurice  Maeterlinck  recalls  this  type  of  eclec- 
tic culture.  Eclectic  is  his  taste  in  creeds  and 
cultures.  And  in  this  he  is  the  true  man  of  the 
twentieth  century,  summing  up  in  himself  the 
depths  and  shallows,  virtues  and  defects,  of 
cultured  eclecticism. 


429 


The  greater  part  of  the  foregoing  essays,  now  com- 
pletely  revised,  first  appeared  in  the  columns  of  the 
New  York  Sun  at  the  time  the  author  was  dra 
matic  editor  of  that  journal.  He  wishes  to  acknow 
ledge  here  the  courtesy  of  William  M.  Laffan,  Esq.5 
in  the  matter  of  their  republication. 


430 


BOOKS   BY  JAMES   HUNEKER 

PROMENADES 
OF  AN  IMPRESSIONIST 

i2mo.    $1.50  net;  postpaid  $1.65 

CONTENTS:  Cezanne,  Rops,  Monticelli,  Rodin,  Carriere, 
Degas,  Botticelli,  El  Greco,  Velasquez,  Goya,  For- 
tuny,  Sorolla,  Zuloaga,  Chardin,  Engravers  and 
Etchers,  Impressionism,  Watteau,  Gauguin,  T 
louse-Lautrec,  Literature  and  Art,  Museum  Pro 


nades. 


ou- 

rome- 


"After reading  any  of  his  sketches  one  is  seized  with  a 
burning  desire  to  see  the  pictures  he  describes,  and  that  is 
about  as  great  a  compliment  as  could  be  paid  to  any 
critic.  '  '  —  Philadelphia  Inquirer. 


EGOISTS 

A  Book  of  Supermen 

STENDHAL,     BAUDELAIRE,     FLAUBERT,    ANATOLE 

FRANCE,     HUYSMANS,      BARRES,      HELLO,      BLAKE, 

NIETZSCHE,   IBSEN,  AND  MAX  STIRNER 

WITH  PORTRAIT  OF  STENDHAL,    UNPUBLISHED   LETTER    OF 

FLAUBERT,  AND  ORIGINAL  PROOF  PAGE  OF 

"  MADAME  BOVAR  Y  " 

i2mo.    $1.50  net 

"Closely  and  yet  lightly  written,  full  of  facts  yet  as 
amusing  as  a  bit  of  discursive  talk,  penetrating,  candid, 
and  very  shrewd.  ...  He  seeks  to  show  you  the  color  of 
a  man's  mind,  and  it  is  evidence  of  his  validity  as  an  es- 
sayist that  straightway  he  interests  you  in  the  color  of  his 
own.  He  is  an  impressionist  in  criticism." 

— ROYAL  CORTISSOZ  in  New  York  Tribune. 


BOOKS   BY  JAMES   HUNEKER 

ICONOCLASTS: 

A  Book  of   Dramatists 

i2tno.    $1.50  net 

CONTENTS:  Henrik  Ibsen— August  Strindberg— Henry  Becque— 
Gerhart  Hauptmann — Paul  Hervieu — The  Quintessence  of 
Shaw — Maxim  Gorky's  Nachtasyl — Hermann  Sudermann— 
Princess  Mathilde's  Play — Duse  and  D'Annunzio — Villiers  de 
1'Isle  Adam — Maurice  Maeterlinck. 

"  His  style  is  a  little  jerky,  but  it  is  one  of  those  rare  styles  in  which 
we  are  led  to  expect  some  significance,  if  not  wit,  in  every  sentence." 
— G.  K.  CHESTERTON,  in  London  Daily  News. 

"  No  other  book  in  English  has  surveyed  the  whole  field  so  com- 
prehensively."— The  Outlook. 

"A  capital  book,  lively,  informing,  suggestive." 

— London  Times  Saturday  Review. 

"  Eye-opening  and  mind-clarifying  is  Mr.  Huneker's  criticism ; 
.  .  .  no  one  having  read  that  opening  essay  in  this  volume 
will  lay  it  down  until  the  final  judgment  upon  Maurice  Maeterlinck 
is  reached." — Boston  Transcript. 


OVERTONES: 

A  Book  of  Temperaments 

WITH  FRONTISPIECE  PORTRAIT  OF 
RICHARD  STRAUSS 

i2tno.    $1.25  net 

CONTENTS:  Richard  Strauss— Parsifal:  A  Mystical  Melodrama- 
Literary  Men  who  loved  Music  (Balzac,  Turgenieff,  Daudet, 
etc.)— The  Eternal  Feminine— The  Beethoven  of  French  Prose 
— Nietzsche  the  Rhapsodist— Anarchs  of  Art — After  Wagner, 
What?— Verdi  and  Boito. 

"The  whole  book  is  highly  refreshing  with  its  breadth  of  knowl- 
edge, its  catholicity  of  taste,  and  its  inexhaustible  energy." 

— Saturday  Review,  London. 

"In  some  respects  Mr.  Huneker  must  be  reckoned  the  most 
brilliant  of  all  living  writers  on  matters  musical." — Academy,  London. 

"No  modern  musical  critic  has  shown  greater  ingenuity  in  the 
attempt  to  correlate  the  literary  and  musical  tendencies  of  the  nine- 
teenth century." — Spectator,  London. 


BOOKS   BY  JAMES   HUNEKER 

MEZZOTINTS  IN 
MODERN  MUSIC 

BRAHMS,  TSCHAIKOWSKY,  CHOPIN, 

RICHARD  STRAUSS,  LISZT 

AND  WAGNER 

I2mo.     $1.50 

"Mr.  Huneker  is,  in  the  best  sense,  a  critic;  he  listens  to  the 
music  and  gives  you  his  impressions  as  rapidly  and  in  as  few  words 
as  possible;  or  he  sketches  the  composers  in  fine,  broad,  sweeping 
strokes  with  a  magnificent  disregard  for  unimportant  details.  And 
as  Mr.  Huneker  is,  as  I  have  said,  a  powerful  personality,  a  man  of 
quick  brain  and  an  energetic  imagination,  a  man  of  moods  and  tem- 
perament— a  string  that  vibrates  and  sings  in  response  to  music — 
we  get  in  these  essays  of  his  a  distinctly  original  and  very  valuable 
contribution  to  the  world's  tiny  musical  literature." 

— J.  F.  RUNCIMAN,  in  London  Saturday  Review. 


MELOMANIACS 

i2tno.    $1.50 

CONTENTS:  The  Lord's  Prayer  in  B— A  Son  of  Liszt— A  Chopin 
of  the  Gutter — The  Piper  of  Dreams — An  Emotional  Acrobat 
—Isolde's  Mother— The  Rim  of  Finer  Issues— An  Ibsen  Girl— 
Tannhauser's  Choice— The  Red-Headed  Piano  Player— Bryn- 
hild's  Immolation — The  Quest  of  the  Elusive — An  Involuntary 
Insurgent — Hunding's  \Yife — The  Corridor  of  Time — Avatar 
— The  Wegstaffcs  give  a  Musicale — The  Iron  Virgin — Dusk 
of  the  Gods — Siegfried's  Death — Intermezzo — A  Spinner  of 
Silence— The  Disenchanted  Symphony — Music  the  Conqueror. 

"It  would  be  difficult  to  sum  up  ' Melomaniacs '  in  a  phrase. 
Never  did  a  book,  in  my  opinion  at  any  rate,  exhibit  greater  con- 
trasts, not,  perhaps,  of  strength  and  weakness,  but  of  clearness  and 
obscurity.  It  is  inexplicably  uneven,  as  if  the  writer  were  perpetu- 
ally playing  on  the  boundary  line  that  divides  sanity  of  thought  from 
intellectual  chaos.  There  is  method  in  the  madness,  but  it  is  a 
method  of  intangible  ideas.  Nevertheless,  there  is  genius  written 
over  a  large  portion  of  it,  and  to  a  musician  the  wealth  of  musical 
imagination  is  a  living  spring  of  thought." 

---HAROLD  E.  GORST,  in  London  Saturday  Reinnv  (Dec.  8, 1906). 


BOOKS    BY  JAMES    HUNEKER 


VISIONARIES 

I2tno.    $1.50  net 

CONTENTS:  A  Master  of  Cobwebs— The  Eighth  Deadly  Sin— The 
Purse  of  Aholibah— Rebels  of  the  Moon— The  Spiral  Road— 
A  Mock  Sun — Antichrist — The  Eternal  Duel — The  Enchanted 
Yodler— The  Third  Kingdom— The  Haunted  Harpsichord— 
The  Tragic  Wall— A  Sentimental  Rebellion— Hall  of  the  Miss- 
ing Footsteps— The  Cursory  Light— An  Iron  Fan— The  Woman 
Who  Loved  Chopin— The  Tune  of  Time— Nada— Pan. 
"The  author's  style  is  sometimes  grotesque  in  its  desire  both  to 
startle  and  to  find  true  expression.     He  has  not  followed  those  great 
novelists  who  write  French  a  child  may  read  and  understand.     He 
calls  the  moon  'a  spiritual  gray  wafer';  it  faints  in  'a  red  wind"; 
'truth  beats  at  the  bars  of  a  man's  bosom';  the  sun  is  'a  sulphur- 
colored  cymbal';   a  man  moves  with  'the  jaunty  grace  of  a  young 
elephant.'     But  even  these  oddities  are  significant  and  to  be  placed 
high  above  the  slipshod  sequences  of  words  that  have  done  duty 
till  they  are  as  meaningless  as  the  imprint  on  a  worn-out  coin. 

"  Besides,  in  nearly  every  story  the  reader  is  arrested  by  the  idea, 
and  only  a  little  troubled  now  and  then  by  an  over-elaborate  style. 
If  most  of  us  are  sane,  the  ideas  cherished  by  these  visionaries  are 
insane  but  the  imagination  of  the  author  so  illuminates  them  that 
we  follow  wondering  and  spellbound.  In  'The  Spiral  Road"  and 
in  some  of  the  other  stories  both  fantasy  and  narrative  may  be  com- 
pared with  Hawthorne  in  his  most  unearthly  moods.  The  younger 
man  has  read  his  Nietzsche  and  has  cast  off  his  heritage  of  simple 
morals.  Hawthorne's  Puritanism  finds  no  echo  in  these  modern 
souls,  all  sceptical,  wavering  and  unblessed.  But  Hawthorne's 
splendor  of  vision  and  his  power  of  sympathy  with  a  tormented 
mind  do  live  again  in  the  best  of  Mr.  Huneker's  stories." 

— London  Academy  (Feb.  3,  1906). 


CHOPIN: 

The  Man  and  His  Music 

WITH  ETCHED  PORTRAIT 
I21T10.      $2.00 

"No  pianist,  amateur  or  professional,  can  rise  from  the  perusal  of 
his  pages  without  a  deeper  appreciation  of  the  new  forms  of  beauty 
which  Chopin  has  added,  like  so  many  species  of  orchids,  to  the 
musical  flora  of  the  nineteenth  century." — The  Nation. 

"I  think  it  not  too  much  to  predict  that  Mr.  Huneker's  estimate 
of  Chopin  and  his  works  is  destined  to  be  the  permanent  one.  He 
gives  the  reader  the  cream  of  the  cream  of  all  noteworthy  previous 
commentators,  besides  much  that  is  wholly  his  own.  He  speaks  at 
once  with  modesty  and  authority,  always  with  personal  charm." 
— Boston  Transcript. 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS,  NEW  YORK 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


NO  PHONE 


RENEWALS 


3  1158011548400 


A     000028726    8 


